
Class . __j „ 

Book P^ /\ "5 

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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



A 



Search for Freedom 



BY HELEN WILMANS 



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SEA BREEZE, FLORIDA : 
FREEDOM PUBLISHING COMPANY 



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COPYRIGHTED, 1898, 

BY 

HELEN WILMANS. 



All rights reserved. 




TJ-VOOOFiFS RECEIVED* 



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CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. — Chapter One Introduces Two Important Char 
acters — 'Little Aunt Mary and Gus . . 

Chapter II. — t: Smartest Youngun 'at Ever Lived, B'gosh ' 

Chapter III. — A Love Letter .... 

Chapter IV.— The Goodest Little Boy That Ever Lived 

Chapter V. — Brother Findlay Comes to Town 

Chapter VI. — At a Catholic School 

Chapter VII. — The Dalton Episode 

Chapter VIII. — Lloyd, Billy Wilkes, and Sally Start a 
Circus ..... 

Chapter IX.— The Story of Ten Little Hats 

Chaptfr X. — Two Offers of Marriage . 

Chapter XI. — A Most Worshipful Hero 

Chapter XII. — School Again 

Chapter XIII. — A Boy Lover 

Chapter XIV. — "Fearfully " in Love . 

Chapter XV. — A Broken Idol . 

Chapter XVI.— The Fetters Are Falling 

Chapter XVII. — In the Reform Movement 

Chapter XVIII. — A Glimpse of the Promised Land 

Chapter XIX.— All Is Mind: the Substance of Which 
Worlds Are Made Is Mental Substance : Thought Has 
Built the Visible Universe 

Chapter XX. — Coming to Florida 

Chapter XXI. — A Vision of the Dauntless 



5 

27 
53 



103 
118 

139 
161 
180 
199 
215 
233 
251 
266 
282 
297 
313 

326 
340 
354 



f\ 5E^^ pOI^ pi^EEDO/T), 



CHAPTER I. 



CHAPTEK ONE INTRODUCES TWO IMPORTANT CHARAC- 
TERS — LITTLE AUNT MARY AND GUS. 

Not long ago I read the opening chapter in the 
autobiography of a distinguished literary woman. 
Every page of it and every word of it were spent in 
apologizing for the egotism that must of necessity 
be apparent in works that naturally embody the 
personality of the writer, As I continued to read it I 
wondered if there was anything on earth quite so 
weak, and often so insincere as an apology. It is a 
confession of shame, either real or hypocritical; and 
why should one be ashamed of his personality, or why 
should it be considered the proper thing to affect 
shame? 

A book may be of infinite worth, but the personality 



6 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

back of it is what makes it so; and it is the glimpses 
o£ this personality filtering through the book that 
give it its vital power to enthrall our imagination 
and arouse our affection. 

I had a lesson on the subject of apologies that 
taught me enough to avoid them forever. I lived in 
California and ray neighbors were farmers and poor 
people. Nevertheless, we were social and entertained 
each other the best we could. It was a matter of 
pride with us to give good dinners to each other; and 
a dinner without fried chicken, mashed potatoes and 
hot biscuit, preserves and pound cake, golden coffee 
and rich cream, and many other cherished delicacies, 
was really not respectable — so rigorous was our social 
code. Moreover, at these dinners the hostess usually 
indulged in apologies for the many deficiencies sup- 
posed to be apparent; thus leaving the impression that 
she could have done a great deal better if she had been 
informed of our coming beforehand. 

I was returning the visit of one of my neighbors one 
day when I learned the lesson of being above making 
an apology ever again — except for a wrong done, or a 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 7 

mistake committed. The lady I was visiting went out 
to prepare dinner, and was quite a long time about it. 
This time must have been devoted to her perplexity; it 
certainly was not given to her dinner, since she had 
nothing but beans which evidently had been boiling 
for an hour before my arrival. There was one cup of 
coffee, and but one. No doubt it was warmed over 
from breakfast; and it was given to me. Her table- 
cloth was very white, and everything, though exceed- 
ingly poor, was neat. She was a Southern woman, 
tall and dark and weather-beaten in appearance. In 
accordance with Southern custom she stood up while 
the family were at dinner. At first I could scarcely be- 
lieve it possible that what I saw before me was really 
the entire dinner; simply beans seasoned with a small 
piece of pork, and the one cup of coffee. But this was 
all; and there stood the lady with a palm leaf fan in her 
hand fanning us while we ate. Net one word of 
excuse did she offer, though there was a look in her 
eyes that went straight to my heart and left an in- 
delible impression. 

At this time, after the lapse of so many years, all I 



O A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

can get of that impression is a sense of womanliness 
beyond the power of words to describe. There was 
reticence there, and the pride of many generations of 
culture, all imprisoned within her own individuality, 
and never to be*betrayed by one word that might seem 
to reflect discredit upon it — that sacred consciousness 
of beautiful self-hood so plainly visible through the 
pathos of her eyes and the gentle dignity of her move- 
ments. 

Appearances might confess her poverty, but she 
would not. They might confess the fact that her 
husband was one of the most trifling, dissipated men 
in the community, but she would not. They might 
speak volumes of her degraded and unlovely life, but 
she would not. Her native queenhood was inviolable. 
She felt it to be so; and what was more, I felt it too; 
and I know to this day that what I dined upon was 
not beans, but the ambrosia of the gods, and served by 
one of them. 

And so in the papers I am writing, I shall give the 
best I have without apology. It will be the best I 
have, because it will be the "I" that I am giving. In 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 9 

giving my "I" I shall disclose the "I" in you who read, 
for we are all off one piece. And oh ! a wonderful 
thing is the U I," whether it is my "I" or your "I"; such 
a beautiful thing; such a majestic thing; and so varied 
in its phases; and for all the variations of it I am so 
thankful and so glad. No two pages in any life his- 
tory alike, and yet each one so vital, so alive! 

This aliveness! It is this which gives an autobiog- 
raphy its charm. The individual is all there; present 
in his own words. ■ He brings himself with him in 
every page. And this is saying wonders; for if a 
person brings himself into your presence, he has 
brought a condensed world there for your inspection; 
and if you are anything of a naturalist you cannot 
help but be interested. 

For my part I am a natural-born naturalist, and like 
to see the world through many different kinds of 
glasses; so when, instead of giving me the glass of 
her own personality to see the world in, the lady of 
whom I first spoke spent twenty pages in apologizing 
for the self-hood of herself, my interest was destroyed 
and I read no more. 



10 A SEAKCH FOE FREEDOM. 

But this work I am now writing is not going to be 
a real autobiography, but only a sketchy sort of 
reminiscence. I may write away quite consecutively 
for several chapters, and then jump whole years; and 
perhaps I may go back to these neglected years to pick 
incidents out of them later on. At all events I will 
do the best I can to show how I cut a trail for myself, 
through jungles of errors and mistakes, from a land 
of bondage to one of comparative freedom; a freedom 
that continually grows more free, and will no doubt 
keep doing sa while I remain an honest searcher for 
truth. 

I wonder if there are many children who feel them- 
selves to be prisoners all through their childish years? 
This is the way I felt. I used to hear my parents say, 
"What a good time the youngsters have; especially 
Helen! Surely, childhood is the happiest period of 
life;' 

Then I would ponder this oft-repeated expression, 
and sometimes it dismayed me. If childhood was the 
happiest part, what must the rest be? For I was not 
happy. With everything to make me happy I was 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 11 

still quietly unhappy. I felt myself hampered and 
restrained. There was an internal restlessness, as if 
some imprisoned thing were trying to find expression 
through me, and could not. 

And yet I was more free than ordinary children in 
that age and under similar conditions; for my mother 
did not hold me in check overmuch, though at the 
time I thought she did. There were very few outward 
restrictions about me; but I carried with me always the 
fettered feeling of one who wears unseen bonds. When 
I played childish games with others of my own age, 
my playing and my enjoyment seemed a pretense to 
me. If I had been an old person indulging in infantile 
sports I should not have felt more out of place than I 
did. I actually had a sense of shama in doing it; it all 
seemed so foolish; so puerile. 

And yet I was not precocious. I think my brain was 
rather sluggish, and I was very indolent. I was heavy 
in my movements and disinclined to action; but I 
doubt if a healthier child was ever born. 

My parents considered me thoughtful because I 
spent so much of my time sitting or lying around 



12 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

quietly, and with an appearance of being in a deep 
revery over something or other. 

But in this matter they nattered me, for I cannot 
recall that I ever thought much in those days. But I 
do recall that I always seemed on the verge of think- 
ing, and that the thoughts eluded me. Not that I 
made an effort to hold them fast, for I did not. I 
seemed to feel that I would be able to think some day 
and could easily wait. 

It was as if something were ripening in my brain, 
but was not then ripe. If there is anything in re- 
incarnation it might be believed that some old spirit 
had taken possession of my baby head, and found 
difficulty in adapting itself to such crude, unmanage- 
able substance as existed there. 

This doctrine of reincarnation is a very strange one. 
It involves more than its advocates seem to see in it; 
but perhaps I do not really know what they do see. 
At all events I shall not discuss the subject here, but 
will try to pin myself down to the matter in hand. 
For it seems to me that if only one person, who, from 
the first, has followed faithfully in the direction of 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 13 

more intellectual light, which means more freedom, 
will give a history of the road he has travelled, and 
the obstacles he has overcome, it will be a more prac- 
tical help to other searchers for truth than the mere 
cold enunciation of principles, divorced from the per- 
sonality that gave rise to them. 

I recall how in my baby years I rarely accepted the 
opinions of others, but sought to get at the cause of 
things myself. For instance, I was one day in the 
carriage with my parents on the road to Carmi ; where 
my grandfather and grandmother lived. I could not 
have been more than three years old at the time. T 
was beset with anxiety for fear the horses would make 
a mistake, and not take us there; so I asked my mother 
if there was any danger on this score. She said u No; 
that my father was holding the reins that guided the 
horses, and that they would surely go right." 

This did not appear reasonable to me, and I kept 
thinking and thinking. After a time I came to the 
conclusion that on the previous evening the stable 
man must have told the horses that they were to take 
us to Carmi the next day. I found no difficulty 



14 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

in believing this, and all my anxiety was removed. 
I suppose I must have manifested a good deal of 
this kind of reasoning in my early childhood, and that 
its fallacy taught me to distrust my reasoning powers. 
Certain it is, I became in time the obedient recipient of 
all manner of beliefs that poured in on me from other 
people, and my own reasoning faculties were dormant 
for many years. If it had not been for this I should 
have escaped circumstances that almost tortured the 
life out of me. 

Evidently I was a child who sought for the cause in 
all the events that passed under my observation; but 
because in these early efforts I made such mistakes as 
I have spoken of, I became discouraged, and began to 
doubt my ability to discriminate between right and 
wrong. This lifted me off the base of my own in- 
dividuality, and made a mere dependent of me so far 
as my judgment was concerned. 

If my natural tendency to do my own thinking had 
been properly directed, instead of being ridiculed and 
crushed, I should never have become the agonized 
victim of church dogma, and submitted to the awful 



A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 15 

belief of an endless hell for those whose reasoning 
powers prevented them from accepting unproven 
creeds. At this time I know that it was not I who 
accepted these creeds. The "I" in me had been set 
aside, and the fears and false beliefs of the world had 
been substituted. It was these fears, these false be- 
liefs that spoke and acted through my bodily organism 
for years. And the awakening, when at last it came, 
was as if I had been lost to myself for an age, and had 
been suddenly, through a certain overt act which I 
will tell of further on, restored to myself. 

We were a very large family of children, and our 
father and mother had been mere children themselves 
when they were married. I was the second child and 
the eldest girl. I was the laziest little imp that ever 
lived. If my poor young mother sent me to wash the 
dishes, I would slip off and go to the garret or some- 
where else, and there lying on the floor or the grass I 
would read "Arabian Nights" the entire afternoon. 
I knew I would get whipped when I went to supper, 
but I did not seem to be afraid of a whipping, from 
which I infer that mother's whippings were very mild. 



16 A SEAKCH FOE FBEEDOM. 

And, indeed, they must have been. I remember 
now how the slightest bit of wit from us would make 
her laugh. She was a glorious laugher, and she 
evidently thought that we were the smartest children 
that the world had produced. Gus, my elder brother, 
and I used to get together and rehearse something 
that we considered funny previous to entering her 
presence, after we had been disobedient and expected 
a whipping; and this expedient was usually successful. 

But I have an idea that mother whipped Gus of tener 
and harder than she did me. He was more afraid of a 
whipping than I was, and I was more afraid for him, 
and early learned to screen him by no end of deceptions. 

This whipping we all know to be a very great mis- 
take now, but at that time it was thought to be a 
terrible thing not to whip children. The people really 
believed they were earning some great future reward, 
both for themselves and the children, by bringing 
them up in fear of the lash. Poor Gus must have 
been a more timid child than I was; and it is the timid 
children who are most easily ruined by this rough 
method of punishment. And yet Gus was not ruined. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 17 

I remember one time when mother had sent us all to 
Sunday school, and when I made her believe I had the 
colic and remained at home (I always hated Sunday 
school), that long before it was time for the children 
to return, Grus rushed into the sitting room exclaiming, 
u Oh! mother, mother, it's in the lesson to-day where 
old Solomon — and he is the wisest old fellow that ever 
lived — said, l spoil the rod and spare the child, 1 and now 
you can't whip us any more forever." 

I think mother felt a genuine heart pang as she 
looked in the boy's bright, earnest, handsome face. 
She put her arms around him and told him of his mis- 
take. But she had to get the Bible and read it with 
him before he was convinced. He was greatly dis- 
appointed, and I suppose he thought there was no help 
for him but in being good — a monotonous alternative. 

Mother had the belief that children must not be 
praised; that praise would ruin them. So she told us 
of our faults and failings, and used such persistent 
energy in destroying everything like vanity in us, 
that I really believe she would have crushed every one 
of us to an extent that would have rendered us unfit 



18 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

for meeting men and women as equals in later life, if 
it had not been for a "special providence 1 ' in the shape 
of "little aunt Mary." 

Little aunt Mary was two years older than Gus, and 
four years older than I was. She was the youngest 
child of her mother, who was dead, and she owed her 
special rearing to the indulgent influence of her 
father, one of the most magnificent specimens of man- 
hood that ever lived. Oh! if I only had time to write 
a character sketch of this loving-hearted, great, kingly 
soul, I could put an inspiration in it that no personal 
experiences of my own have power to evoke. 

The way grandfather brought up little aunt Mary 
was to let her bring herself up. They did not live 
with us, but came often and made long visits; and 
then there were months at a time when grandfather 
was absent on business, when little aunt Mary was 
put under mother's care. This little aunt was a phe- 
nomenon. Nobody's opinion had the slightest effect 
on her character or conduct. For this reason I think 
she may have been very annoying to her elders. She 
did not seem to know she had any elders; and the way 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 19 

she expressed her opinion of their weaknesses actually 
carried their feelings for her clear over the point of 
exaspiration into the region of perpetual laughter. 
Mother always laughed when she spoke of her, but 
there was an expression of perplexity in the laugh, as 
any one could see. 

Mother never seemed to try to establish any au- 
thority over little aunt Mary; and I do believe that 
there was something in the sphere of the child's 
thought that prevented it. She was a queenly child. 
She was utterly unconscious of her own ignorance, 
and entirely loyal to some secret sense of self-respect. 
She was not a pretty child, though she thought she 
was; and she grew into one of the most beautiful 
women that ever was seen. She was never insolent, 
and was too fearless to lie, or even to equivocate; but 
she held her own against my mother's sneers and ac- 
cusations of vanity by the frankest avowals, and sus- 
tained her avowals by such argument as her childish 
brain could suggest, and I never saw her angry in my 
life. She reigned — a veritable empress — among us 
children, of whom there were several by this time, and 



20 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

more coming. We were actual servants for her. She 
did what she pleased with us, and we were proud to be 
considered worthy of waiting on her, and of receiving 
her protection in return. For she did, indeed, protect 
us. If mother perceived the least particle of vanity 
cropping out in one of us, she nipped it in the bud in- 
stantly. And I can remember how little aunt Mary 
could don her queenly manner on such occasions, and 
with a face perfectly free from fear would say, for in- 
stance, "Sister, why do you say that Helen has red hair? 
You know it is the poet's rarest golden." ( She had read 
such stuff as this out of our fairy stories.) "And you 
know, sister, that Helen is a beautiful child, and the 
best little girl to mind me that there is in the family. 1 ' 
It made no difference what mother said after this. 
Aunt Mary would soon be wearing my best string of 
beads, leaving me destitute of ornament. Mother — 
who was really sweet-tempered — often laughed and 
called me a little dunce; but aunt Mary would again 
come to my defence, and prove by argument that con- 
vinced me — if no one else — that I was a child of vast 
intelligence. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 21 

Gus had now reached an age when he might have 
become unmanageable, if it had not .been for little 
aunt Mary. Mother's stringent efforts to keep him 
at home and away from other boys were making him 
sly. He had begun to have many a stolen pleasure, 
and to deceive mother as much as possible. Moreover, 
he had roped me into his assistance in this deception, 
so that when he needed some one to prove an alibi for 
him, a small amount of training would make me en- 
tirely competent for the transaction. I was secretly 
afraid to tell a lie, for I had a wholesome dread of the 
punishment attached to such transgressions, namely, 
that the liar "has his part in the lake that burneth 
with brimstone forever, 1 ' but that seemed a good way 
off, whereas Gus's whipping was a sure thing and very 
close at hand. Then, too, I was very young, and Gus 
had promised me faithfully a hundred times that if I 
died and went to the "bad place" that he would go 
there with me and whip the devil and all his imps, and 
bring me home again. 

The supreme trust little girls have in their older 
brothers is almost pathetic. Gus lied to me, and I lied 



22 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

to mother for him with great willingness; and he spent 
as much time with bad boys as he pleased. But little 
aunt Mary changed all this. She told him that she 
wanted him to stay in of evenings and entertain her. 
She said she was a fairy queen, and had to have her sub- 
jects about her. She told him that there was no boy 
in all the town that would compare with him. She 
said she loved to look at him because he was so pretty. 
And Gus stayed at home of evenings to give little 
aunt Mary a chance to admire his beauty. She made 
him read out loud to her and me, though he was a 
poor reader and hated his books like poison. But 
little aunt Mary was always acting a part in obedience 
to some secret thought of her own; a thought that 
placed her on some high pinnacle in authority, and 
rendered the presence of obedient worshipers neces- 
sary. She made use of us to the utmost extent of her 
power; but she would not let others do it. If ever for 
a moment one of us rebelled, she used argument and 
flattery to conquer us, and this succeeded. She was 
never angry, and she was never unpleasant in the ex- 
hibition of her power. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 23 

If mother reproved us, aunt Mary remonstrated. 
"You ought not to say such things, sister," she would 
say to mother, "it sounds too hard. You ought not to 
hurt your children's feelings. They are such good 
little things, and so pretty and smart." 

Mother's ever ready laugh was the usual response to 
this kind of thing; and I really expect she was pleased 
to have aunt Mary praise us. At all events there was 
a decided effect produced; for often when some of the 
country people, who came to our store to trade, and 
remained to dine with us, would say, "What a pity your 
gal has got red hair, 'Lizabeth; she ain't nigh so likely 
as the boy." Mother would answer quite earnestly, 
"Her hair is not red. Can't you see for yourself that 
it is the pure golden of the poets?" 

But still she never admitted that any of us were at 
all good looking except in defence, when we had been 
attacked. 

Little aunt Mary was an artist. Though she strictly 
avoided doing anything useful, she always took a ma- 
ternal survey of us when we were dressed for Sunday 
school, and gave the finishing touch to our toilets. In 



24 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

me she would usually adjust my bonnet so as to make 
a coquetish display of my curls. For Gus she would 
pull down the waist of his jacket, and punch the dim- 
ple in his cheek a little deeper; and so on down to the 
baby, who was always flattered by any attention from 
her. I have seen a six-months-old baby stop crying 
when aunt Mary entered the room, and look at her 
with round, inquiring eyes as if asking what it could 
do to oblige, her. Aunt Mary was always compli- 
mentary to the baby in a grave, queenly way, but 
never took it in her arms, though the little thing often 
wished to go to her. 

The fact is, this child was a queen. I remember 
that on one occasion she had Gus and me bring up 
empty dry goods boxes into one of the upper rooms, and 
cover them with scraps of wall paper and tinsel and 
bows of old ribbon for her throne, where she wore an 
apron hind side before for a trail, and sat in state, 
while we waited on her. It was on this day that we 
pulled the icing off of mother's big company cake, and 
brought it and offered it to her on our knees. It 
seemed to us a great act of condescension on her part 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 25 

to eat. it; but she did eat it, though with a superb in- 
difference that left the impression that nothing was 
good enough for her. 

Afterwards when confronted with the theft, Gus 
lied with great nimbleness, and I followed suit. 

Little aunt Mary was the smallest of us three 
children. Gus was about an inch taller than she was; 
I was about her height, but weighed nearly -twice as 
much, and was usually called u Fatty." Small and 
delicate looking as aunt Mary was when a child, she 
grew into a splendidly developed woman, several inches 
taller than I am. 

Little aunt Mary never failed to come to our 
assistance when we were cast down, which was quite 
often, as mother believed it to be her duty to take the 
wind out of our sails whenever she perceived any wind 
in them. At such times Gus, who was a sensitive 
child, would cry bitterly; and I, who was not sensitive, 
and cared very little for mother's opinion at that 
time, would cry in sympathy with him. Then aunt 
Mary would say, " Why, little folks, sister don't under- 
stand either of you. The reason she has not got a 



26 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

better opinion of you is because she don't know much 
herself. You are really lovely children. Of course 
you are not so pretty and smart as I am, but when 
you get as old as I am, you will be; that is, if you are 
good and mind all I tell you. 1 ' 

How my heart would swell with gratitude when she 
would say such things to us, and Gus's handsome dark 
eyes would be so soft and luminous that his face was 
angelic; for he was really one of the most beautiful 
boys that ever lived, and looked like an infant god in 
comparison with little aunt Mary; but I did not draw 
comparisons then. I took aunt Mary at her own 
valuation, and prayed every night, after my other 
prayer was said, to be made like her. 



CHAPTER II. 



"SMARTEST YOraGUtf AT EVER LIVED, B GOSH. 

None of us liked Sunday school. Perhaps I should 
have said in the first part of this sketch that I was 
born in Fairfield, Illinois; and, at the time of which I 
am writing, the town did not contain more than three 
hundred people. There was no church there, but an 
occasional preacher preached in the court house. Sun- 
day school was also held in the court house, and aunt 
Sally Linthecum was the president, vice-president, 
superintendent and teacher. 

She was not my aunt, but was called aunt Sally by 
everybody. She was an old maid near fifty years of 
age at this time. She was tall, full-muscled and 
strong. Her hair was very light colored, but not gray, 
and she was really a wonderfully handsome blond. It 
was with difficulty that she could read; but she was 
very religious, and had started the Sunday school her- 
self. As I remember now, it seems to me that aunt 



28 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Sally had complete control of the whole town. I 
cannot recall that I went anywhere without seeing 
her; and wherever I saw her she was in command — 
doing something herself, and giving directions to 
others. She presided at marriages, births and funerals. 
She looked after the morals of the entire community. 
I do not know in what spirit her ministrations were 
received, but I believe she was rather regarded as a 
necessary evil. 

At Sunday school the children — about thirty — sat 
on benches that were destitute of backs, and read a 
verse apiece in the Bible. Never knowing our lessons, 
Gus and I used to look along the class and count noses, 
and then count verses so as to discover the verse that 
would come to us. Then we would study it in- 
dustriously and be in good shape to read it creditably 
when our time came, unless it had hard words in it. 
Whenever we came to a hard word we said, u Latin, 
skip it," and skipped on to the next word. As aunt 
Sally did not know the difference, it often happened 
that there were more "Latin, skip its" in the Bible 
lesson than anything else. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 29 

All this passed off well enough; but when the boys 
began to trade marbles and to eat green apples on the 
sly, there was a row. Many a time I have seen the 
whole school in commotion. Some of the scholars in 
trying to slip out were collared and brought back and 
tied to the bench legs with strong cords fished out of 
aunt Sally's pocket. Others were taken across her 
lap and well spanked with her slipper. She was 
spanking Gus one day when my little sister Lib and I 
remonstrated. We slipped down off the high bench 
and went to her, holding each other's hands in order to 
strengthen our courage for the rebellion we con- 
templated. We were both crying, (jus was squirming 
and making a noise loud enough to wreck the roof. I 
raised a little paw that looked like a dimpled white 
satin pin-cushion and struck aunt Sally on the knee, 
putting about one mouse power in the blow. Lib 
raised another small bunch of dimples and struck her 
on the other knee. Aunt Sally would not have known 
it if she had not seen it. 

"Mean old thing," I said. "Mean.old fing," said Lib. 

u Sass me, will ye/' said aunt Sally, dropping Gus 



30 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

and grabbing us. She held us both in one hand while 
she searched her pockets for a cord. The cord was all 
in use. Undaunted by this deprivation she lifted her 
skirts and took off a garter made of flannel listing 
about two yards long. She tied me to the bench with 
it; and then taking her other garter she tied Lib up 
also. 

I do not remember how this escapade terminated; 
but really it is not an overdrawn picture of aunt 
Sally's Sunday school. 

A year or two later we had a respectable Sunday 
school, conducted on regulation principles; and we 
were compelled to go to it. This latter school was so 
much more uneventful than aunt Sally's, aud so much 
duller, with such a dearth of stolen fun, that we all 
looked back upon aunt Sally's school with that yearn- 
ing regret one feels for a joy that has gone never to 
return. 

I have said that I would not do any housework un- 
less actually forced to do it. But there was one thing 
I would do. I took good care of the children. The 
child next younger than I was Lib, one of the fairest 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 31 

little blonds I ever saw; next to her came Lloyd, and 
then lvens, then four little girls, Emma, Julia and 
her twin sister who died young, and last of all baby 
Clem. There were nine of us. 

I was only a baby myself when the responsibility of 
the younger baby began to weigh on my mind, and I 
would rock the cradle by the hour without being told 
to do it. As the number of children increased, my 
cares increased. It was hardly possible to see me 
without a baby in my arms, and one or two others 
tagging after me. Even in my extreme fealty to 
aunt Mary they were not forgotten. I was a slave to 
the little things, but did not seem to know it. It was 
my love for them that enslaved me, rather than any 
compulsion from my mother. But it must have been 
an immense relief to her to have some one with them 
she could trust as she trusted me; and I have no doubt 
but this is the reason she was so lenient with me in 
the matter of dish washing and other household work. 

I was rather disinclined to activity. I did not climb 
trees and indulge in sports that called for much 
exertion. I followed the other children rather as a 



32 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

protector than anything else. Wherever they were I 
was close at hand with the baby in my arms. Their 
childish plays amused me, and I was a great laugher; 
u The happiest hearted child on earth," the neighbors 
used to say; but I knew it was not so. There was 
always the pressure of some undeveloped force in my 
brain, and it pushed me forward to — I did not know 
what. But it was forever there urging me on like an 
uneasy conscience; and I felt that I was loitering, and 
a fugitive from duty. How did I get such an idea? 

I cannot remember wheti I learned to read. I was 
a great reader, though our collection of books was 
meager— "Pilgrim's Progress, 11 "Fox's Book of Mar- 
tyrs, 11 that I hated and finally destroyed bit by bit on 
the sly. The "Arabian Nights 11 I read more than 
anything else. I read this book out loud to the 
children. It was a very old edition, but elaborately 
illustrated. We might be seen out on the grass on 
our stomachs with our heads in the centre of a radiat- 
ing circle, ending in several pairs of feet, all of us 
intent upon the development of one of the startling 
stories. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 33 

I read these stories all the more to the children be- 
cause they had power to hold them in my sight, and I 
was never easy if part of them were gone. I carried 
the responsibility of the children, I believe, much more 
than mother did; though probably she would have 
been equally as anxious about them if it had not been 
for her supreme trust in me. 

Having my bump of ideality developed by such read- 
ing, I soon began to compose stories for them. I 
expect these stories were queer combinations of fairies, 
griffins, magicians and monsters, but they delighted 
the little ones. My reputation as a story teller spread 
through the town, and often I had dozens of eager 
listeners. I was greatly praised for my skill and be- 
came a centre of attraction for all the small folk of 
the village. After a short experience with this thing, 
I became ambitious and began to illustrate my tales as 
I told them. A pencil and a blank book were riches 
to me then. I could not often obtain the latter. But 
I had pencils enough, and I used the margins of my 
school books for my illustrations. Down one margin 
and around the bottom and up the other side my in- 



34 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

terminable caravan of u what is its' 1 wound their way. 
Elephants, lions and tigers, fairies, goblins and demons 
were all in the procession that only ended with the 
last page of the book. These figures were very small, 
of course, but many of them were strikingly like what 
I intended them for. I drew them with astonishing 
rapidity, my tongue running on endlessly in description 
of the story as I continued to draw. I think there 
was real merit in my drawing. 

I began to get a local reputation as an artist; and 
sometimes I ventured to take a portrait of some pretty 
baby, which I colored out of a ten cent paint box. I 
was considered a genius by the ignorant country 
people of whom the town was composed; and one 
might have thought their praise would be greatly 
prized by me. But for some reason or other 1 did not 
care for it. I was so intent on expressing my little 
ideas by tongue and pencil that I scarcely knew what 
people said of me. I had grown to be a very busy 
child in my own way. I had become self-centered — 
sufficient unto myself — partly from natural tendency, 
and partly from little aunt Mary's training that 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 35 

rendered me first indifferent to the adverse opinion of 
those about me, and afterwards rather indifferent to 
their good opinion. 

I made no effort to attract any body's notice. I 
was full of my own ideas, and was always trying to 
work them out. At this time the pressure of that 
strange mental force, which had so often seemed to be 
driving me, was less. It was outflowing in congenial 
expression; it was partly appeased. I was becoming 
more free; less pent up in my organism. 

But though I made no effort to attract attention, 
and was happier with my drawing materials on the 
floor, and the baby seated near, than when surrounded 
by crowds of admiring urchins, yet I was the attract- 
ing centre on all occasions. Children abandoned their 
play to congregate around me and see and hear what 
I was saying and doing. I did not need nor want 
them, but they came. I have since discovered the law 
in this matter. Intentness of purpose concentrates 
the faculties of a person. Such a person becomes a 
magnet. Knowing this, anyone can become a magnet 
through the practice of concentration. This power 



36 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

is developed through the study of Mental Science. 
I seemed to have it naturally when a child. Later 
in life I think I lost it; but now, with the knowledge 
of how to regain it, it is coming back in great force. 

Self-centered children are more or less indifferent to 
praise and blame. Among my own children there was 
one who was wonderfully self-centered. Lying on the 
floor, with her fat legs turned up over her back, mold- 
ing pigs and horses out of the inside of an underbaked 
biscuit, it was impossible to attract her attention from 
her work. She was so sweet and fair, and so entirely 
independent, that she drew our hearts most powerfully. 
To pick her up and half smother her with kisses was 
a temptation that some of us could not resist. 

"Top it! top it! Do way, put me down; me 'pises to 
be tissed; now don't oo do it adin. 1 ' Such remarks as 
these were the only return we got for our love. And 
this child, whose greatest wish was to be let alone, 
was followed and watched with deep interest by all 
the other children near. She was self-centered. She 
drew to herself all those who were less self-centered 
than she was. She was always busy, always working 
out some idea of her own. 



A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 37 

I wonder if anyone is interested in this "Meander- 
ing Mike" of a narrative. I stop writing occasionally 
to ask this question; and then I find myself smiling 
as I recall some episode of child character that once 
passed under my observation, perhaps along time ago. 
For I have always been a close observer of children, 
and I have had more good laughs at the little darlings 
than at all other things in life put together. I could 
fill a book with their absurdities, their charming 
characteristics and their quaint oddities, and sometimes 
I have thought I would do it. 

Up to the age of perhaps nine or ten years I had 
very little respect for what was called the truth. I am 
sure that I weighed matters in my mind and came to 
the conclusion that lying was not only easier, but 
more comfortable all round than seeing the children 
whipped, or even scolded or punished. I had to choose 
between two disagreeable alternatives, and I chose 
that which best suited my feelings. It is true that I 
frequently wabbled a little in my choice when mother 
held the fear of hell fire before my eyes, but this fear 
had not taken a deep hold on me then, though it did 
so later. 



38 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

I remember on one occasion that she held out a 
strong incentive to me to tell the truth. She said 
that if I confessed a lie after I had told it God would 
forgive me, and that I would be saved. This set me to 
thinking, and I concluded that my best plan was to lie 
first and confess afterwards, and so save my own soul 
as well as my brother's body. 

It must be remembered that up to this time I really 
was not much afraid of the u bad place, 1 ' because I was 
quite sure that Gus could wipe it out, root and branch, 
before it could hurt me. And yet I could see that 
there might be an easier way of dodging it, and 
mother's suggestion appealed to me as decidedly busi- 
ness like; so I tried it a short time afterwards. 

One day I had been drawing the u long bow 1 ' more 
than usual. Everything had gone wrong with the 
children, and mother had the headache so that her 
nerves were unstrung. I never remember a day when 
she took down the rawhide from its nail so often. I 
was almost wild and lied right and left recklessly. 

That night I was awakened by a terrific storm of 
thunder and lightning. It filled me with fear, and 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 39 

made all previous descriptions of the "bad place" a 
terrible reality. I began to think that I needed for- 
giveness very much indeed. I slipped out of bed and 
went into mother's room. 

"Mother," I said, "I have been telling a great many 
stories, and I want to confess them." 

"Tell me all about them," said mother. 

Then she waited, and I waited. "Well, goon," said 
mother. 

I had not thought what to tell her, and now that I 
did think, I could recall nothing that would not involve 
some of the children. I was sure this would not do. 

"Go on, Helen," said mother. 

I knew in a moment that I must trust my wits; so 
I said: "When you told me the other day that I 
should not go blackberrying with the children, I 
went, and then told you that I did not go." 

"I can't remember that I told you not to go. What 
day was it?" 

"Oh! one day not long ago." 

"Not long ago? Why, I am sure I am always glad 
when you take them away and keep them from bother- 
ing me. What day was it?" 



40 A SEAECH FOE FEEEDOM. 

"Oh! not long ago; just the other day. Oh! yes, it 
was last summer, or summer before last; I remember 
now." 

"Very well, 1 ' said mother, "you are a good little 
girl to confess it, and God will forgive you." 

This was encouraging. It raised my spirits and lim- 
bered up my imagination to its work, so that I com- 
posed another lie, and told it with great glibness. She 
praised me again. Then I told her another, and 
several others. In the flashes of lightning I could 
see the bright eyed baby sitting up in bed watching 
me, and listening. I had waked him up. I could see 
mother's interested face high up on the pillow, but 
father's face I could not see. I hoped he was asleep. 
He was a man of irrepressible humor, and I felt un- 
easy about his hearing my confessions. As these 
confessions proceeded there came at last the gargling 
sound of laughter that could no longer be suppressed. 
u Send her to bed, Lib," said father; "don't you know 
the little monkey is making that up as she goes 
along?" 

"Oh!" I cried, "I am afraid to go to bed for fear the 
devil will get me." 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 41 

Then he got up and took me by the hand. "Will 
the devil get; me?" I asked. 

"Damn the devil, 11 he said. 

Mother groaned. I was horrified. It was the first 
time I had ever heard him swear. And then to think 
he had sworn about so influential a character as the 
devil was too awful. I expected the floor to open and 
swallow us all up. I screamed hysterically. 

He took me in his arms soothingly and carried me 
up stairs and slept with me until morning. 

It is astonishing that the majority of parents know 
so little of the power of terror over the minds of their 
children. A child's imagination is so strong and mas- 
terful that it needs only a suggestion of something 
frightful to fire it to the verge of insanity. Nobody 
knows what sufferings the little ones undergo from 
this one source. There is no offense for which I would 
discharge a nurse or attendant so promptly as for an 
attempt to frighten a child. 

That night before I fell asleep my* father told me 
there was no devil and no hell; but his words had little 
effect upon me in comparison with mother's fixed con- 



42 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

viction. I knew that my father often spoke impul- 
sively, and that mother treated many of his assertions 
with marked incredulity; so I took sides with her be- 
cause her faith expressed my own fears, and I was 
afraid not to fear. And yet it was not until I was 
some years older that this horrid doctrine began to 
poison my mind in a way that almost wrecked my 
reason. 

Little aunt Mary was away from us a great deal at 
the time I began to have such power as an entertainer 
of the other children; and when she was with us for 
short visits she took no interest in my work. Her in- 
difference to it acted like a rebuke upon me, which I 
certainly felt to a degree that shook my interest in it 
without entirely causing me to abandon it. 

It must be acknowledged that my fealty to little 
Aunt Mary was also rather marred for a time, though 
I really never outgrew it. I was drawn in two op- 
posite directions at once, and the result was a stand- 
still. Her visits at this time were interruptions in the 
steady unfoldment of my own individuality, and as 
they became more frequent they marred it to a great 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 43 

extent. I began to be part aunt Mary and part my- 
self. In this half-and-half condition I became more 
open to the opinions of those about me. 

I think now, as I compare my character during child- 
hood with that of the children I am acquainted with 
to-day, that I was more independent of popular opinion 
than the majority. There was an immense amount of 
"push" about me, which though pretty well con- 
cealed — for I dared not make much display of it — 
indicated a strength of individualism that was never — 
through the whole- course of my after life — totally 
crushed. Indeed, it was never crushed in the least. 
It was "side-tracked" over and over again for short 
intervals, but during these intervals I really believe it 
was gathering force rather than losing it. 

It is a fact that children who have this force of in- 
dividualism are always more indifferent to the opinions 
of others than children of weaker will. It is this lat- 
ter class who are more easily managed than any others, 
by working on their love of approbation. 

My parents had no such hold on me. Praise did 
not stimulate me to effort nor did blame. It was evi- 



44 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

dent that I had something unseen towards which I 
was working, the attracting power of which over- 
balanced the considerations that ordinarily serve as a 
stimulus to many children. I did not know what it 
was myself any more than the bulb knows of the lily 
folded within its layers; but I felt the developing force, 
and was in a great measure obedient to it. I would 
have my own way; I pushed past obstacles; I climbed 
over them or crept under them; any direction that pre- 
sented the least resistance in the attainment of my 
wish was the direction I took. I could not get my 
own way openly and by telling the truth, but I usually 
gained it u by ways that are dark and tricks that are 
vain," like Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee. 1 ' 

Now if my inclinations had been bad I should have 
given my parents great trouble; for I belonged to 
that class of youngsters called "headstrong." But 
my natural inclinations all ran towards harmony and 
peace, and the development of the beautiful, and the 
love and protection of children and helpless things; 
and every bit of lying I ever did was prompted by a 
perfectly enormous mother love, and a sympathy as 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 45 

wide as the world; a love and sympathy so great as to 
make truth telling entirely subordinate to my desire 
to protect all creatures from suffering. I think my 
mother had a half way idea of this, for she did not 
correct me much or severely. And after she was 
dead— she died suddenly when I was only a young 
girl — a letter was found that she had written the day 
before to one of her sisters in which she said: " While 
all my children have been good and lovely, and have 
blest me most abundantly, I think perhaps that Helen, 
with her devotion to her sisters and brothers and her 
generous nature, has been the greatest help of all." 

And yet Grus was her favorite. She was so proud of 
him, and he was so handsome and manly I cannot 
wonder at it. Then I always believed that Lib stood 
next in her affections. Lib was such a fair, dainty 
little thing; so tender and yielding and dependent, and 
so extraordinarily pretty. She looked like mother, 
too, and it sometimes happens that this fact tightens 
the link between mother and daughter. 

Not having much time to be sensitive, with so many 
ideas of my own to work out, I gave small heed to the 



46 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

thought of being sandwiched between these two beauti- 
ful children. There never was a brat more light- 
hearted and free from jealousy than I was. I gloried 
in the charms of the others without thinking much 
about myself in any way. I must have been a good- 
looking child, however, in spite of being too fat — 
which was considered a great drawback to my appear- 
ance. I was so healthy! In all my experience I ha\e 
never seen any one so impervious to disease. The 
place in which we lived was very sickly. It was the 
Wabash bottom lands. The town had timber on one 
side and prairie on the other, and the location was 
really very pretty to look at. But such another hole 
for every form of disease I surely never heard 01. 
This was many years ago, and these conditions are 
now changed. But then every head there was full of 
beliefs in disease, and in its power as an active facte r 
in human concerns. It was God-appointed; ard when 
death resulted it was God's judgment. Nevertheless, 
in spite of God and his judgment, the main business of 
the inhabitants was paying doctors in the hope of an- 
nulling the effort of Almighty wisdom in exterminat- 
ing them. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 47 

It not unfrequently happened that three-fourths of 
every family in town was bedfast at one time. In the 
spring it was spring fever; in the fall it was winter 
fever; in the summer it was u milk sickness 1 '; and 
all the time it was "fever V ager." It was said of 
that town that the court house bell was rung three 
times a day for the inhabitants to take quinine. Truly 
there were plenty of little children whose abdomens 
were so distended with enlarged spleens, and whose 
limbs were so shrunken that they looked like very 
young frogs just emerged from the tadpole condition. 
Many of the people were so poor that the children 
only wore one garment in warm weather, and it so 
short and narrow that it did not conceal the shape of 
the distorted little bodies. It goes without saying 
that most of them died in childhood, and that funerals 
were so common as to make no impression on my mind 
at all. 

All of our children had turns of being sick except me, 
and it was a great trial to me that I was so overlooked. 
I longed to have only one chill and fever, if more were 
denied me. But hope and pray as I would I could not 



48 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

get sick. My skin was as fair as the petals of a blush 
rose, and my hair hung in massive waves and curls, 
and had the healthy luster and the bright color of 
well pulled molasses candy. I was as fat as a "butter- 
ball" duck; and wherever there was the proper place 
for a bone to protrude, as in knees and elbows and 
knuckle joints, in me there were nothing but dimples. 
Once I pretended to be sick, and mother gave me a 
dose of calomel, rhubarb and jalap, with occasional tea 
cups full of senna tea that came very near killing me. 
The last dose she brought was too much for my 
patience. I flung myself about and finally got out 
behind the bed and sat on the floor howling. Mother 
could not reach me, but she sent my little brother 
Lloyd to me with the nauseating dose in his hands. 
The little fellow begged me to take it, and when I 
would not, he drank it himself saying he "spected" it 
would do as much good, and mother would not know 
the difference. My ardent desire to be sick was now 
cooled; but I was very proud of the experience, be- 
cause it seemed to give me an entrance into the grand 
social privilege of the place; that of talking about the 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM.. 49 

time when I had u the fever and came mighty nigh 
dyinV 

It is difficult to realize the amount of medicine that 
was taken in those days. The neighbors had a way of 
keeping the empty bottles to show to each other; and 
I think it was a matter of rivalry among them to see 
which one had the greatest number. I have an idea 
that there was some claim to moral or intellectual 
superiority attached to the matter. I am sure that 
when this subject was under discussion, and this was 
as often as a group of them chanced to meet, I felt 
disreputably small and out of fashion because I had 
no claims to distinction based on the number of 
medicine bottles I had emptied. 

I cannot say, however, that it rankled ir my mind, 
nor do I hold it responsible for a little episode I am 
about to relate. Mother believed in medicine, not 
only as a curative for present ills, but as a preventive 
for expected ones. So when the weather seemed to be 
warm, or cool, or medium, or very cold, or when indi- 
cations prophesied any of these conditions, she thought 
it best for us to take a dose of quinine every morning 



50 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

before breakfast; and I being the proper person was 
always appointed to administer it. The quinine was 
in liquid form and was given with a teaspoon. The 
children hated it, and it was all I could do to get them 
to take it. But I believed in its efficacy to such an ex- 
tent that I thought their lives depended on it. Of 
course this lent such power to my efforts that not one 
of them ever escaped. 

It was mother's understanding that I was to take it 
too; and the one grain of consolation to the poor little 
ones was that my turn would come. So when they 
were through I would pour my own tea-spoonfull 
and raise it to my lips, and turn and run to the corner 
of the porch where the honeysuckle vine was so thick, 
and where I could dispose of it without detection. 
Then coming back I would meet them with a face as 
expressive of a bad taste as their own. There were 
other ways of eluding their vigilance when this one 
wore out; but my character suffered a good deal from 
the doubts that were reflected on my veracity, and I 
had to do something desperate to switch public opinion 
off the track. So one morning I took the bottle, a 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 51 

large one, and quite full, and gave the children to 
understand that I would satisfy them; and I drank the 
contents down, every drop of it, in full view of the 
entire group. 

They were breathless for a moment and then ran, 
panic stricken, to mother. Poor mother was awfully 
frightened and sent for our family physician. He was a 
doctor of home-made manufacture, and had never seen 
the inside of a college in his life; but he was really 
one of the most successful practitioners I ever saw; 
and this was because he was so vital, so high spirited 
and so jolly. His laugh could be heard half a mile 
away, and it was more efficacious than his medicine. 

When the doctor came I was on the lounge, and he 
approached me rapidly and with the gravest face I had 
ever seen him wear. His expression was such that for 
a moment I was psychologized into forgetting that I 
had cautiously emptied the quinine out of the bottle 
an hour before and filled it up with water. I began 
to think maybe I would die, and a cold sweat started 
on me as he felt my pulse and examined my tongue 
and placed his hand on my heart, etc. 

For two long hours they watched for symptoms. 



52 A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 

Breakfast came and was eaten, and I not there. Mercy? 
how hungry I was! I had not calculated on so serious 
a deprivation. 

The doctor grew suspicious and attempted to cross- 
question me, but I declined to commit myself. At 
last he prepared to leave. "Is there any particular 
diet I shall give her?" asked mother. 

"Oh ! yes, Lib, 11 said he as he stood with the door knob 
in his hand, "be very careful of her diet; don ? t give 
her anything more indigestible than india rubber flap 
jacks and hard boiled goose eggs. 11 

Years after this, seated in a handsome carriage 
behind a spanking Kentucky team with this same 
doctor, then a widower for the second time, but still a 
strikingly handsome man, though verging toward 
sixty, he made me an offer of marriage which I de- 
clined. Afterwards, to fill an embarrassing interval 
that ensued, I told him how I had deceived everybody 
about the quinine. 

''Smartest young un 'at ever lived, b'gosh," said 
the doctor cheerfully; "roped me in then, and have 
roped me in again when I am old enough to know 
better. B'gosh! I don't know what to do with you." 



CHAPTER III. 



A LOVE LETTER. 

The previous chapter is far from giving an adequate 
idea of my experience with sickness. Owing to the 
natural motherhood of me, I became a splendid nurse 
even when quite young. 

I had to take my turn sitting up of nights with our 
own sick children, and as it often happened in the 
morning after one of my nights that the little patient 
was better, it came to be believed that I had some 
special and heaven-endowed gift of healing. 

In those days the practice of medicine was very 
rigid. No matter how high the patient's fever ran, 
all water was forbidden. Certain diet was prescribed 
with the death penalty attached to a deviation from 
it. No fruit was allowed; no acids of any kind; 
and the most powerful medicines were given at fixed 
intervals. I recall the very first night from which 
my reputation as a nurse took its rise. My little 
sister Emma, just nine years younger than I, was 
subject to bilious attacks in which she was almost 



54 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

consumed with fever. She was the sweetest child, 
and the most angelically beautiful one, in the world, 
I thought. She was the special pet of the entire 
family and of the whole town. She was called the 
flower of mother's flock on account of the loveliness 
of her disposition, never manifesting a particle of ill- 
temper on any occasion; always obliging, happy- 
hearted and generous. This darling sister is still 
living — a very beautiful woman yet — beloved by all 
who know her. 

On the night referred to, mother had no sooner 
gone to bed leaving me alone with the little sick 
creature, then only three years old, than she began to 
beg for water. Her large, pleading, innocent eyes 
would not release mine for an instant, and her coax- 
ing little voice tore my heart in pieces. u Oh! Henny^ 
watty, watty, please; please, dear Henny. ,, 

I begged and plead with her. My tears answered 
her moans, for her parched eyeballs were moistureless. 
When I could hold out no longer I gave her just one 
swallow, and watched its effects. She kept begging 
for more, and I gave it. Before an hour I took a 
tumbler out on the back porch where the well stood, 
and brought her a whole glass, cool and dripping. 
Oh ! how she drank it. Then I gave her another and 



A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 55 

another. I knew symptoms well enough to see that 
she was getting no worse; and presently her pulse 
went down, and she slept while the perspiration came 
out on her forehead. I do not know that I ever 
passed a night in such terror; but her sleep was so 
healthful and her skin so natural, that I became re- 
assured and began to do some thinking for myself; 
especially as she woke up hungry as a hunter just 
before day, and begged for some bread and butter and 
jam. These were forbidden things too; but one act 
of boldness prepares the faltering soul for another 
and I gave her what she wanted, carefully clearing 
away all signs of my disobedience and making her 
promise never to tell. When mother came in Emma 
was asleep again, and before the new day passed she 
was virtually well. 

Cause and effect are largely developed in my head. 
I learned my lesson from this night's experience, and 
every patient that I attended reaped the benefit of it. 
And this is why I got the reputation of being a 
heaven-ordained healer. This, and another thing 
equally as important, that of throwing the medicine 
away. The children hated to take it, and after a few 
cautious experiments in throwing part of it away I 
got to throwing it all away. 



56 A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 

I expect the reader will wonder that a naturally 
bold, frank child should do all this in an underhanded 
manner. I find in looking back at myself that in 
spite of my boldness and frankness I was secretive- 
I cannot tell what argument passed through my im- 
mature brain, but I suppose I knew that the opposition 
was too strong for me, and that I could only have my 
own way by taking it on the sly; and it is my 
opinion now that it took a very daring child to do as 
I did, even though I did it with such extreme caution. 

And no doubt I had some system of reasoning that 
justified me to myself. I think all children have. 
And because this is so, I beg every mother in the 
world to use patience and argument with her little 
ones, and abstain forever from the brutality of a blow. 
If parents will conquer themselves they will find that 
they will not need to conquer their children. The 
silent and peaceful breath of self-conquest com- 
municates itself without even a spoken word, and 
harmonizes every discordant element in the family. 

Now, will it be believed, that somehow or other 
this knowledge was in me when I was a child, and all 
my secrecy and deceptions were in the line of its un- 
foldment under such difficulties as I necessarily met 
in the organized opinions of that time? 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 57 

It was too big an undertaking — in the face of so 
much opposition — to explain myself; and probably I 
was quite unable to do it, even if I had wished to; so 
I simply pushed forward in the accomplishment of 
what seemed most desirable, working silently in lines 
that presented the fewest obstacles. 

I find this same disposition with me still. I never 
argue with anyone. People may argue with me, but 
they will have it all to themselves. They may think 
they have convinced me, and yet they have not 
swerved me by the tenth part of the frailest idea. It 
is the same way about giving advice. I never do it; 
and it is useless for any one to offer it to me. There 
is some unseen goal to which every attribute of my 
whole nature is true as the needle to the pole; and it 
always was. That this leading is in the line of my 
individual development, I do not doubt. To me it 
means life itself, and the abandonment of it would be 
the abandonment of life. 

The chief difference I find between myself as I then 
was, and myself as I now am, lies in the fact that 
while I was formerly secretive and obtained my own 
way by deception, if I could not have it otherwise, 
that now I am bold enough to scorn deception, and I 
value the trend of my individual unfoldment too 



58 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

highly to care a straw for the opinions of other people 
regarding it. I take my own course openly, and 
pursue it earnestly. If friends approve I am glad; if 
they oppose I bear their opposition stoically; but in 
any case I keep straight on; nothing swerves me. 

And what does this mean?. I believe it means 
simply fidelity to my own individual self -hood; fidelity 
tu that consciousness which distinguishes me from 
the consciousness of another: fidelity to my own sense 
of what is best, in distinction from the sense of 
another as to what is best. 

We sometimes speak of a child as a natural-born 
liar. There are no natural-born liars. Take off the 
pressure that would warp a child out of the line of its 
own individual and original development, and that 
child immediately becomes truthful. It is an igno- 
rant system of bringing children up that makes them 
lie. It is a condition of irresolution fostered in them 
by making them afraid to have their own way, even 
when every current of their being is set upon doing 
so. In such a case the child is open to choose either 
his own suppression or a suppression of the truth. If 
he is a weak child he consents to be suppressed, and 
becomes what his parents call a truthful child, but 
with a broken will. If he is a strong, vital, head- 



A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 59 

strong child, lie will have his own way and lie about 
it. But when these children are grown up, it is the 
latter type that make the world movers, and the 
former type that make the hangers on. 

And again I object to the term truthful as applied 
to the first class, and to the word liar as applied to 
the second class. For I say that fidelity to one's self, 
to one's most earnest desires, is a truthfulness that 
stands far above that trained infidelity to self, which 
involves the surrender of the will for the sake of be- 
ing considered a good boy or girl. 

So far as my deceptions were concerned, I was 
perfectly free from self-accusation during my child- 
hood. I was conscious of something that justified 
me. Farther on I got a definition of the situation 
that satisfied me up to the time my reason became 
submerged by the fear which the plan of salvation 
engendered in my mind. After that I had no ideas of 
my own about anything for years. 

But my definition of a lie was this. If a thing was 
said with an intent to harm another person, that thing 
was a lie, no matter how true it was: but if it was 
said in the interest of peace and harmony and happi- 
ness, it was true even though every word was false. 
I was very far from telling this to mother, or, indeed, 



60 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

as a rule to any one, but once when my father and I 
became confidential I told him, and he said I was the 
most truthful little girl he ever saw. I would have 
trusted my father with all my thoughts but for a 
certain expression in his laughing eyes that made me 
think he was making fun of me. As it was I lived 
two lives. One, the unseen one, was purely ideal, and 
everything was beautiful there. The other was my 
external, every-day life that I tried to conform to the 
ideal one. Actually I carried a heaven about with me 
into which all my friends were admitted without their 
knowing it; and while there they were all perfect. 
Not one of them had any deficiency of person or 
character, and they were all rich and dressed in silk 
and satin and lace every day. Not a soul of my 
acquaintance was excluded except for a little while at 
a time; as, for instance, some child that had slapped 
one of our children, or otherwise offended my sense of 
right. 

Among these friends who lived in this secret heaven 
were people who were to all intents and purposes 
entirely unfit for any heaven whatever. They were 
the riffraff of one of the most ignorant communities 
in the United States. But I brought them in and 
dressed them up and made them good and happy. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 61 

There were three little girls whose mother was very 
poor, and a dreadful woman besides. These little 
things would come trailing into school of a morning, 
the eldest in front and the others following Indian 
file. The town boys called them Rag, Tag and Bob- 
tail, and treated them badly. I made no effort to 
defend them; I reproved no child for his cruelty; I 
simply could not do it at that tender age; but when 
alone I took these little girls into my Paradise and 
made princesses of them, and gave them higher places 
of honor than any of their persecutors. 

I had quite a struggle with myself to admit boys 
at all, except my brothers. I did not like boys. The 
expression I most frequently used in describing them 
was that u they had no sense.' 1 

How they could find their chief pleasure in tortur- 
ing things I could not understand, and in fighting 
each other. It was such a mystery to me that I 
actually thought them deficient in mental capacity. 
I was afraid of them, and would go a good way out of 
my road rather than meet one if I was alone. But 
we had a girl in school who was not afraid, and did I 
not glory in her pluck? 

The school was taught in an upper room in the 
court house. In dismissing it, the teacher always 



62 A SEAECH FOE FEEEDOM. 

sent the boys out first. When they reached the outer 
door — instead of leaving, as was expected of them — 
they often stopped and formed two lines through 
which the girls had to pass. As we passed out, they 
would jeer and taunt those among us against whom 
they had a grudge. The girl to whom I have just 
alluded was certainly a peculiar specimen of humanity. 
She had the features and carriage of a Greek goddess; 
but her beauty was marred by a perpetual frown. The 
whole world went wrong with her, and her position 
towards it was bitterly antagonistic. Such a fighter 
as she was! Her father, who died early, was an Irish- 
man, and a truly grand character. Her mother was 
the softest, most baby-like, pretty little bit of a 
woman I ever saw, but slightly deaf. She was 
married again to a man younger than herself; and all 
the horrors relating to the cruelty of step-fathers were 
far outdone by the cruelty practiced on him by his 
step-children, of whom there were three, Kate being 
the eldest and the leader, It seems surprising to me 
now to recall her boldness and courage. We more 
timid girls would pass down between the two lines of 
boys, and take a safe position where we would wait 
for Kate. I can see her now as she suddenly appeared 
in the door on such occasions, her form erect and 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 63 

divinely muscular; her features so perfect that her 
freckles hardly had power to mar her beauty; her blue 
eyes covert, almost downcast, but emitting baleful 
gleams from under the drooping lids; bareheaded, too, 
with her slat sunbonnet clubbed in her stout right 
hand. In those days our sunbonnets were filled with 
hickory splints, and could be converted into quite 
formidable weapons. And there I seem to see her 
standing, without a word, as the boys dare her to 
come on, distorting their faces with diabolical grimaces 
and writhing their bodies into such shapes as appear 
most threatening and dangerous. Kate waits her 
opportunity, knowing that such unusual movements 
as they are making in their effort to terrorize her, will 
exhaust their muscles. Finally when she is ready she 
springs from the door step upon them with the agility 
of a tiger, and knocks two or three down just by the 
sheer force of her flying form; clips a half dozen 
more on the head with her clubbed bonnet; digs her 
claws into another, kicks three or four more, butts 
another with her head and makes his nose bleed; and 
keeps this up until she puts them all to rout, or at 
least banishes them so far that they content them- 
selves with throwing stones at her in the intervals of 
nursing their bruises. But she herself is an adept at 



64 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

throwing stones, having served an apprenticeship on 
her step-father, and they have no advantage of her in 
this matter. 

I loved this girl, and we grew up close friends. She 
was intellectual and developed a taste for reading. 
She made a splendid woman and a social leader. She 
married and was the mother of extraordinarily fine 
children. After thirty years absence from the town I 
went back there to find her insane. Her strength, 
her force, the very majesty of her intellect, having 
found no outlet suitable to their grand character, had 
turned to rend her. A few years later she died. 

Next to me, in respect to age, was my sister Lib, 
named after mother; then there were two boys, Lloyd 
and I yens. These two little villains gave me more 
trouble than all the rest of the children. Wherever 
one went the other went, and what mischief one could 
not suggest, the other could. They stuck together 
like a pair of pickpockets, and never were known to 
turn state's evidence against each other, no matter 
what the provocation. I was eternally carrying these 
youngsters out of danger; and as they Were large, 
heavy children, the best I could do was to take them 
around the body below their arms and drag them 
away. In doing this they had the free use of their 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 65 

feet; and I am not exaggerating when I say that 
there were years that I was never once free from 
bruises from my knees to my anklss, inflicted by them. 
Now, while I really loved them, they never seemed to 
me like Gus. Gus was the man of the house; but 
these little unkempt cubs were a pair of troglodytes 
that by careful preservation from death, might develop 
into second editions of my beautiful elder brother. 
This was the way I felt towards them, and my care of 
them was unflagging; and I do really suppose that a 
great part of it was unnecessary. 

The fence that bounded the back part of our garden 
was made of boards, with one flat board on the top 
that — on Saturdays — served as a seat for us children. 
Just across the street was a saloon where intoxicating 
drinks were served, and where on this particular day 
of the week, half the men in the county were collected 
to talk, drink and have a social time. All along this 
street were hitching posts erected, and many horses 
were tied to them. Indeed, the town was full of 
horses and men on this day. It seemed as if every- 
body — by common consent — dropped work and came 
to town on Saturday. It was like a circus to us; and 
we were in the habit of sitting on the fence patiently 
from morning until evening — unless the men got to 



66 A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 

shooting each other — and entering into the excitement 
of the occasion. What drunken brawls we witnessed, 
and what horse racing and big talk and threats, all 
of it usually winding up in a half dozen harmless 
fights! It was only very rarely that any one had a 
pistol to use. 

Now, will some one tell me how it was that with 
my naturally peaceful disposition I entered into the 
riotous enjoyment of these wild scenes? For I surely 
did enjoy them. Then, too, I had no trouble with the 
children on these days. They sat there with me in 
perfect content; even the baby would be quiet and 
happy as it watched the busy panorama and listened 
to the neighing, screaming horses. It must have been 
the life in it that was so attractive. It was in such 
vivid contrast with the other days of the week, whose 
monotonous, droning events were only one remove 
from death. 

At least I would think so now if I had to live that 
life over again, having known something better; but 
then I did not really feel its dullness. I was too 
superbly alive myself not to see life in everything. 
Fat and lazy as I was, and nearly always loaded down 
with the weight of a baby, yet I was the most in- 
terested spectator of the doings of the ants and bees 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 67 

and other small folk of the fields, which I would 
follow with great interest to their homes and do what 
I could to discover their habits without hurting them. 
And I was interested in the people about me. I knew T 
when Mary Ellen Watkms, aunt Emma's hired girl, 
would have money enough saved up to buy a pink 
calico dress and a pair of prunello slippers; I kept 
accounts for her. The wages of a hired girl in those 
days, and in that place, were fifty cents a week. Other 
things were proportionally cheap. Think of hens 
that had no more spirit than to supply the market 
with eggs at three cents a dozen; but they actually 
did it. The "new hen 11 in this Bloomer stage of 
female development values her services more highly. 

Those were primitive times. I cannot recall the 
unseen working of the system of industry that pre- 
vailed, but I know that the women spun and wove 
flax and wool, and made the material they and their 
families used for clothing. Where they got the flax 
I do not know. I know where they got wool, because 
every family kept a few sheep. Every neighborhood 
had its own shoemaker who got enough work to do to 
support him. The shoes he made were simply dread- 
ful to behold. But ugly as they were, the best of 
care was taken by his customers to make them last as 



bO A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

long as possible. I have met many a crowd of people, 
young and old, coming home from church carrying 
their shoes in their hands to save the wear of walking 
in them. 

My condition in life differed quite materially from 
that of man}^ of the people .about me. My father 
a kept store.' 1 We did not wear homespun clothes nor 
home-made shoes. We were called "quality folks," to 
indicate this fact, and were greatly looked to by many 
of our neighbors, and especially by the country people. 

Mother was decidedly a society leader. To our 
Fairfield swelldom she was what the Four Hundred 
are to New York; or what the immortal Worth was 
to Paris, and indeed to all the world. Mother found 
out some how or other that little girls wore drawers, 
and made some for me. I remember her trying the 
first pair on me. She had me stripped and standing 
in the middle of the room. It must have been cold 
weather for there was a fire. I also recall the fact 
that aunt Clem and aunt Emma were present. Aunt 
Emma had too much sympathy with children to 
laugh, but aunt Clem roared, and mother could not 
keep her face straight, though she tried. 

"Sister, 11 said aunt Clem, u she is the living image of 
old Johnny Young. 1 ' And then they fairly whooped. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 69 

Johnny Young came to town every Saturday dur- 
ing warm weather, dressed in tow linen trousers and 
shirt, with knit "galluses." He weighed four hundred 
pounds, and was a sight to behold. One of aunt 
Clem's little girls was caught stalking him in the 
street one da}% tiptoing after him like a hunter 
after his game. In describing him she said, "He was 
awfy behind, but he was airfij before. " 

To be compared with old Johnny was an insult I 
could not stand. I became sulky and would not move 
except as I was pushed around. When they were 
done, and had taken the drawers off. T picked them up 
and ran and threw them in the fire. What followed I 
do not remember. As I was in good spanking costume 
I probably got spanked; but if so, a spanking was 
such a slight insult in comparison with being said to 
resemble Johnny Young, I have forgotten it. 

The drawers, however, became an established in- 
stitution, and my dresses, which had formerly been 
down to my shoe tops were shortened almost to my 
knees. The drawers came clear to my feet; and my 
appearance may be imagined. One day as I was pass- 
ing the store, a man from the country, a regular "Blue 
Jeans'' — that was what we town people called them — 
spoke to me. He said, "I don't know whether to call 



70 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

you Sis or Bub; but I want to say that my boys wear 
breeches, but my gals don't." 

I said nothing. I was too timid, too startled; but I 
held that man in profound contempt for years, and 
rarely a day passed that I did not — in imagination — 
make some elaborately cutting reply to his remark. 
I was then, and am still, troubled with "after wit." 

But, my mother being a great social leader, it was 
not long until all the respectable families in town had 
drawers on their little girls; or, if not drawers, then 
an imitation of them in the form of "pantalets." 
These peculiar garments were bags in which the lower 
part of the leg was incased. They were tied below 
the knee with the same string that held the stocking 
up. One disrespectful boy in town called them "shin 
curtains," and remarked sneeringly that if people 
were as modest as they ought to be, they would put 
them on the bedstead legs too — for all of which his 
ears must have burned fearfully, if there is anything 
in signs, for we little girls did cat-haul him un- 
mercifully behind his back; and finally, as the most 
withering piece of sarcasm, and the most irredeemable 
reproach, we changed his name from Fay Turney 
to "Fraternity." This, to our infantile intelligences 
seemed such a stroke of sarcasm that, out of pure 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 71 

self-gratulation, we forgave him. Later, but while 
still children, I was the recipient of Fay's youthful 
affections, and got a love letter from him. He gave 
one of my little brothers a goose egg to bring it 
to me. Goose eggs were legal tender there, and the 
Goose folk in the neighborhood of town must have 
had a difficult time to increase their families owing to 
the depredations of the boys. 

I did not like Fay's letter because it alluded to 
points concerning which I had a right to be sensitive, 
having already heard too much about them. He said 
that "some folks didn't like fat girls, but he did; and 
some folks didn't like red hair, but he did; Hall 
Wilson said I looked like I was cut out of a solid 
piece of salt junk, and he meant to taste of me some 
time and find out; but he, Fay, had lain in wait at a 
certain fence corner and flung a stick at Hall that 
mighty nigh split his fool noodle plum open." This 
and more like it went to make up Fay's letter, which 
I would not have considered a love letter but for his 
emphatic assertion of the fact, and by his winding up 
with some poetry that everybody in town would have 
sworn was indelible proof: 

"The rose is red, the violet's blue, 
Sugar's sweet, and so are you." 



72 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

The next time I met Fay on the street, I picked up 
a pebble and held it tight in my hand until I had 
passed him without looking at him. When a safe 
distance behind him, I threw it at him wickedly, and 
ran as fast as I could. 

Fay passed from the world of sense years and years 
ago; and Hall Wilson, who was going to find out by 
a practical test whether I was cut out of salt junk or 
not, got to be private secretary to President Lincoln. 
It was not long after Lincoln's death before Hall — 
still young, handsome and talented — joined the silent 
majority. What a strange feeling of stillness conies 
over me when I think of all these old companions so 
long gone. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE GOODEST LITTLE BOY THAT EVER LIVED. 

My two little brothers often talked of going to see 
the world. I discovered that the world they intended 
to visit was on the other side of the dimly outlined 
timber, just beyond the prairie, which bounded the 
town on the north. Several times I caught them 
stealing off in that direction, and dragged them back 
by main force. But once they got so far ahead of me 
I could not catch them. So I followed them, begging 
them to return, alternately scolding and crying. I 
can still see Lloyd trudging ahead sturdily, and that 
fat pudge of small imp, Ivens, trotting after him. It 
was evening and would soon be dark. My distress 
was simply indescribable. I was afraid of the tall 
grass in the prairie, which was higher than our heads, 
and the cow path we were in was dim and undefined. 
Night closed around us. We could barely distinguish 
the path; and yet that infant demon in the lead 
walked on as if made of the finest steel springs. 
After a long time Ivens began to lag; then I took 

73 



74 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

him by the hand and still followed. Presently he 
began to bawl, and I tried to carry him. In this way 
I fell quite a distance behind Lloyd, who never once 
turned his head to see whether I was there or not, 
but marched straight on with unabated zeal. I 
hurried all I could to catch up with him, and the last 
I saw of him he was crossing a ravine on a rail or 
slender log placed there as a sort of primitive bridge 
for foot passengers. I cried out to him to stop. I 
was exhausted and almost breathless. It never was 
in me to walk a log like that, or even to "coon it." 
It was all I could do to navigate my tub of a craft on 
solid ground. As the boy went steadily over that 
frail crossing and disappeared in the total darkness on 
the other side, it was as if my life went with him. It 
must be remembered that in spite of my being a head- 
strong child, I had been frightened so much I was 
timid; so it is not surprising that the pictures I drew 
of snakes and lizards and wild cats were enough to 
keep me wide awake and in agony for hours, as I sat 
there in the dew-damp grass with Ivens in my lap, 
wrapped up in the short skirt of my dress to protect 
him from the chill of the night. He had been hungry, 
and had cried himself to sleep. Hours passed that 
seemed like ages to me. At last I heard" the report of 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 75 

a gun, and then another and another. I knew what 
that meant, and rolled the fat lump of a boy out of 
my arms and stood up, hut so stiff I could scarcely 
move. [ heard a horse coming, and voices calling; 
and then every bit of vocal capacity in me limbered 
to the occasion, and I yelled loud enough to raise the 
dead. I have always had a most powerful voice. 

One man took Ivens on a horse with him, and 
another took me. A number of men continued the 
search for Lloyd. They found him several miles 
beyond where I was sitting. He had reached the 
"world, 11 and was struggling along among the trees. 
They brought him home by sheer force, for he was 
still resolved to go on. For the first time in my life 
I was glad to see a child whipped. But it did no good; 
the boy had a mania for running off, and more than 
once plunged us all in distress by his capers. 

Lloyd was a peculiar child in more ways than one. 
I never understood him, and I was not at all able to 
manage him. He was fleet-footed as a greyhound, 
and strong as a young lion. He upset all authority, 
and carried Ivens along with him in his reckless 
behavior. I never knew what real trouble was until I 
came to have these two boys to look after. It is true 
that Grus was a* source of perplexity, and occasionally 



76 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

he frightened me by some of his capers; but he was 
always gentle and kind and sensible, while these two 
boys were inconsiderate and restless, and as indifferent 
to consequences as a couple of Newfoundland pups. 
For Ivens 1 offenses to me, he has been overtaken by 
regular preacher's retribution. He married young, 
and has had seven boys in one unbroken line; and 
may the Lord have mercy ou his soul. Gus, on the 
other hand, has a houseful of pretty daughters, and 
does not need mercy from any supernatural source. 

Occasionally, however, Gus frightened Lib and me, 
but never "with malice aforethought or prepense" 
(if the lawyers will pardon me for quoting one of the 
absurdities of their vernacular). 

Our family were what were called, in those times of 
great simplicity, high livers. That is, we had meat 
three times a day, and wheat bread, and plenty of 
preserves and other sweets. Mother was a woman of 
ideas. If she had lived in the reign of fads that besets 
the nation at this time, I cannot imagine where she 
would have found a stopping place. But in her time, 
fads were few and far between; and they were also 
very weak and unobtrusive little things; but they 
were the progenitors of all we have now, and of a 
thousand more not yet ushered in. But the fads of 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 77 

that day — such as they were — must have appealed to 
my mother's prophetic soul, since never one of them 
put its nose in our mental atmosphere that she did 
not lasso and harness to the chariot of her progressive 
ideas. So when there began to be talk about hygiene 
and bathing and dieting, it actually seemed as if we 
were to be drowned first and starved afterwards. We 
were permitted to eat everything the family ate except 
at supper, when we were provided with mush and milk 
and put to bed before dark. This was terrible. At 
least it seemed so to us. Children are very sensitive 
to such things. I remember that my days were 
clouded with gloom just because of this new edict; if 
the sun had gone out it would hardly have made my 
heart heavier. 

And never a protest did Lib or I utter. But Gus 
was a boy, and he refused to stand it. He said noth- 
ing to mother, but he told us that he would starve 
before lie would eat mush and milk and go to bed at 
sundown. He made these remarks several times while 
eating his mush and milk right along, and con- 
sequently the force of his threat was weakened. But 
one evening he refused to eat. He said he simply 
would not live to be so imposed upon. Matters began 
to look serious. We little sisters begged him to 



78 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

eat; but onr begging and our too evident fright 
strengthened his resolve to starve to death right then 
and there. So he began to die; and he did die accord- 
ing to the best light he had on that subject. He 
staggered around, and then fell; after which he went 
through the maneuvers of a chicken with its head off, 
flopping about fearfully, but gradually subsiding into 
convulsive shivers, and then perfect repose. 

At first Lib and I clung to each other in inexpressi- 
ble terror. Then when all was over we gave such 
shrieks as brought the family about us instantly. In 
spasmodic gasps we told what had happened. Mother 
marched with firm strides to where the rawhide was 
hanging, and was only one second in bringing the 
dead to life. 

Whether Glus's simulated death had any effect on 
her or not I cannot say, but it was not long before 
the mush and milk suppers were abandoned, and the 
sun shone again in our baby lives. 

But of all the youngsters who maneuvered to have 
their own way, Lloyd took the lead. The number of 
schemes he hatched, the number of escapades he 
engineered to certain wreck, the number of times he 
ran off, the number of threats he made, and the dire 
character of those threats, are beyond my power to 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 79 

recall. But for my folly in believing he would do as 
he threatened, I would have had more peace of mind. 
But it has already been shown that I was more in- 
clined to believe my fears than my hopes, and so he 
kept me in hot water constantly. Once — in the 
height of my career as a story writer — an epoch I 
have not yet reached in this narrative — I wrote a 
sketch called "Good for Naught. 1 ' It was quite a 
literary success. Its characters were all drawn from 
my home life. Among others this brother Lloyd 
figured in it under the name of Bill; and the incidents 
I described therein were the scarcely overdrawn occur- 
rences of this boy's childhood. 

It could not have been long after his visit to the 
"world" when he ran off and walked fifteen miles to 
Burnt Prairie. There he stopped at the house of a 
stranger, and asked to stay all night. Of course, no 
person could refuse the fair haired, pretty little 
creature, fashionably dressed, too, for that part of the 
world, and betraying all the marks of belonging to 
"quality folks," as the upper class was called; so he 
was welcomed politely, and on being requested "un- 
folded his tale." He said his name was Pete 
Hargroves; that his mother was a widow and lived in 
the northern part of the state; that he was going to 



80 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Shawneetown to become cabin boy on a steamer 
running from that place to New Orleans. 

The next day was Sunday, and he was starting on 
his journey again, when his host told him what day of 
the week it was, adding that no one could succeed 
who broke the Sabbath by travelling. Lloyd was 
easily persuaded to delay his trip. Unfortunately for 
his intentions he concluded to farther placate the 
powers above by going with the family to Sunday 
school. There he met a man who traded at father's 
store, and who knew our children by sight. 

This man I recall as one of the familiar figures of 
my childhood; "Old Steve Merritt." He probably 
was not old at all. But children look into a face of 
forty and recognize more age there than they can find 
in a face of eighty when they themselves have crossed 
the meridian line. Steve Merritt was one of the 
staunchest citizens of the country. He was a lame 
man, but his walk denoted great decision of character 
in spite of the fact. 

After Mr. Merritt had some conversation with the 
man who brought Lloyd to the school, he then went 
to Lloyd and asked him who he was, and where he 
came from. Straight as could be Lloyd repeated the 
same yarn; his name was Pete Hargroves; his mother 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 81 

was a widow, etc. When he had finished, Mr. Merritt 
said, u Now, young man, I know you. You're one of 
Cale Wilmans 1 boys; and you've run off; and I'm go- 
ing to tote you home.' 1 And he did. In the evening 
of that same day, Mr. Merritt appeared before the 
door on horseback, with Lloyd strapped on behind 
him. Poor mother who had been frantic all during 
his absence, succumbed and went comfortably to bed. 
But I was afraid to let the little villain out of my 
sight; and though my sight was blurred by crying 
until my eyes looked like two holes burnt in a red 
blanket, and my white eyebrows showed to more 
startling disadvantage than ever before, yet I kept up, 
and followed him wherever he went, exerting myself 
co entertain him, too, in spite of the fact that each 
pulsation of my aching head was like a blow from a 
hammer. 

Neither of my small brothers liked to work. Put 
them to doing anything useful and they tired easily. 
Mother used to tell them that work was good for 
them; it loosened up the skin so they could grow. 
But they did not want to grow. They wanted to be 
dwarfs so they could go with a show and make money 
easily. And Lloyd would tell mother what he would 
buy for her when he got to be a dwarf and earned 



82 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

twenty-nine million dollars a week. "And when I'm 
goin' to be so rich you oughtn't to make me work. 
And I won't work neither; I'll kill myself first." 

"Bless us and save us! It runs in the blood," 
laughed mother; and then she told him how Gus 
committed suicide, and was brought back to life with 
a switch. 

"Yes," he said, "but Gus didn't know how, I'll die 
dead and fast. I'll make a sure enough die of it, and 
then you'll feel awful bad 'cause you worked me so 
hard." 

Scarcely a day passed without this threat in one 
form or another, and it became a permanent joke 
among the town boys of his own age — who, by the 
way, never called him anything but "Pete Hargroves" 
after the run away adventure I have spoken of. 

It made Lloyd mad to be called by this name, and 
he had fought many a fight because of it. But at 
last he was forced to accept it, though never willingly. 

"Ain't you dead yet, Pete?" they would ask in 
feigned surprise at seeing him. And their leave tak- 
ing, after being with him awhile, was very affecting. 
Some of them would weep silently, while others 
sobbed convulsively or blubbered out loud, "We'll 
never see you alive again, Pete." 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 83 

This jocular way of treating the matter strengthened 
Lloyd's resolution, until a day came when he had been 
worked so outrageously human nature could hold out 
no longer. He had brought in three baskets of chips, 
had set the chairs up to the table twice, and gone to 
a neighbor to borrow a sleeve pattern. 

"Durned if I'll stand this any longer," he said to 
himself as he sauntered into the parlor to be out of 
the way of work. "I ain't goin 1 to let mother run this 
caravan any more. I'm tired of life. It don't pay. 
Mother says Gus tried to die and couldn't. I know 
he could a died just as natural as life if mother — I 
ain't agoin' to call her mother. I'm agoin' to call her 
'Liz' like old Pete Staten does. I know Gus could a 
died if mo — Liz — had only gumption enough to let 
him alone, but mothers never haves any sense any 
how. I've knowed this ever since I was borned. 
Course Gus couldn't stay dead when they was a 
whippin him. He : s too gritty for that. Nobody'd 
stay dead and take a poundin'. Catch 'em at it. 
They'd get up and pitch in, unless they was too 
awful, mis'ble dead, and then nobody wouldn't pound 
'em. Now, then, I'm agoin' to die dead. I ain't got 
nothin' to live for. Moth — Liz — ain't got no sense; 
she's a eejot. The baby's meaner than anybody, too; 



84 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

squack, squack, squack, if you just crook your finger 
at her, and run and tell moth — Liz. And then there's 
them boys, durn 'em — 'boo hoo, boo hoo — good bye, 
Pete, give my love to the devil when you die.' I hope 
there is a sure enough devil, and that he'll get every 
one of 'em. Durn things anyhow. I'm a agoin' to 
lay me down and die, and I'll do it now before mo — 
Liz — wants some more chips. Won't she be 'sprised 
when she comes in and finds me dead? She'll feel 
awful bad too, goody! goody! I'd like to be back 
again to hear her howl. She'll feel so bad that she'll 
just paw the ground and kick up. Now here goes 
this caravan for a long journey." 

And so he stretched himself out on his back and 
folded his hands on his breast. (At least this was 
his recollection of it some years afterwards.) Then 
he got to wondering if there is a devil, and the 
thought brought him instantly to a sitting posture. 
This small iconoclast had always doubted the exist- 
ence of the devil, and his system of reasoning on the 
subject was not bad. Pausing a moment as he sat 
there, he decided that there was nothing in it; u Cos 
if there was he'd a had mo — Liz — long ago." He laid 
down again and quieted himself to his last sleep; 
then he craned his neck up and looked along the line 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 85 

of his body. "Dura that hole in my knee," he 
whined, "it spoils the looks of the corpus; makes it 
appear undignant." Then he composed his epitaph: 
here lies the body of lloyd wilmans. he was 
the goodest little feller ever lived — 
only nobody didn't know it. he would 
a made a smarter man 'n george 
washington or old solomon if he 
had continered to reside in this 
world; but his mother made 
him do things he didn't 
want to do till she 
killed him. 
"That'll make her squeak," said he. "That's the 
pizen that'll fetch her." Then his thoughts went 
back to the devil. "Guess I'd better pray a little to 
make it safe anyhow." Rolling his eyes upward he 
said: "Heavenly Father, I'm a dyin'. Don't let the 
devil get me. I should a thought you'd a put a end 
to him long ago. Maybe you have. If so, bully. If 
not, then you can't do it too soon, 'cos you know no- 
body's safe with him rummagin' round loose — not 
even me, and I'm the goodest little boy there is — Oh ! 
Lordy, what's that?" 

He had sprung to his feet with a very red face. 



00 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

The object of his excited exclamation was a dragon 
fly — his special abhorrence. We children called them 
devil's darning needles, and really thought it probable 
that they had some special connection with that fear- 
ful individual after whom they were named. The 
dragon fly had flown in through the open door, 
touched Lloyd's little clasped hands a moment, and 
fluttered against the window pane. 

u Now, I've got you, 1 ' said he; so he took a small 
leather sling out of his pocket and some shot, and 
began to fire at it. He had almost emptied his pocket 
of shot — his mouth, rather — for it was in this con- 
venient receptacle he deposited them, when the insect 
careened backward in mid-air, made a side swoop 
almost touching his tormentor's head, and darted from 
the room. At this moment the sound of a voice 
reached him from the back alley. It was one of the 
boys calling him out to get another chance to tease 
him. 

u You can 'Oh! Pete,' and 'Oh! Pete,' till you're 
tired," said he, stretching himself once more upon the 
carpet and composing his limbs in death. "There 
ain't no Pete as I knows of, and no Lloyd either, or 
won't be pretty soon. I am as good as dead already." 

He had scarcely assumed this position when he 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 87 

started up in horror, shouting so lustily that he 
brought the family about him in a hurry. 

"I'm shooted! Fm snooted!" he yelled, jumping up 
and down in violent excitement. 'Tut shooted! I'm 
shooted!" 

Mother began to examine his body, tearing his 
clothes off in extreme consternation. At last it "was 
apparent that there was no hurt on him; but still he 
roared, "I'm shooted! I'm shooted!" 

"You little dunce," said mother, "there's nothing 
the matter with you." 

u 0h! there is, there is," he cried; "I'm shooted! I 
swallered a shot!" 

And this was the outcome of his suicidal intention. 
He was so glad when he found himself safe that he 
brought in a basket of chips without being asked; and 
he gave little Emma two of his handsomest marbles 
that same afternoon. To be sure he took them from 
her the next day, but let us not mention it. "The 
goodest little boy that lives" cannot be good all the 
time. 



CHAPTER V. 



BROTHER FINDLAY COMES TO TOWN. 

The aptest word I can apply to myself as a child is 
"aliveness. 1 ' I was — in my own way — tremendously 
alive. That this aliveness was not expressed in great 
bodily activity is no reason for doubting that the 
condition existed. It betrayed itself in my love of 
those things that were alive; in my appreciation of 
life; in my disposition to protect all living creatures. 
It caused me a pang to kill anything, even the things 
I was afraid of; as snakes, worms, etc. I seemed to 
enter with my own feelings into the life of the lower 
creatures. I had a perfect passion for flowers and all 
growing plants. I was the first to find out that the 
recently planted garden seeds had broken the mold 
and come through; and my heart warmed with glow- 
ing affection for every one of them. "Oh! you little 
things, here you are," I would think, and be as happy 
in welcoming them as if they had been long lost 
friends. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 89 

I was fond of natural history. I read it with avidity. 
We had a great big book on the subject in our limited 
collection, and I poured over it with never failing 
interest. I may«say that 1 studied it; and it is the 
only thing I ever studied until I came to investigate 
the might} 7 subject of man. I never studied my school 
books. There was no life in them; nothing but dust 
and ashes. And yet I learned them without studying 
them, and slid along in my classes better than the ma- 
jority of the children; but they were soon forgotten. 

In the study of natural history, as given in this 
book, and carried out still farther by my great interest 
in living things, I laid the foundation of my entire 
future life. It was from this that I came to think of 
the law of growth, and man's relation to it. It was 
also from the study of natural history, aided by the 
education I had derived from "The Arabian Nights," 
that I began to look upon man as a being of limitless 
power. But all of this was crushed back and kept 
under for many years. The seeds of a mighty truth 
were buried in my mind, but the time of their ap- 
pearance was not yet. 

In the meantime I jogged along under the responsi- 
bility of the children, and the heavier responsibility 
of the religious ideas that began to be crowded upon me. 



90 A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 

A church had been built in the town, and a preacher 
made regular visits. Mother soon manifested great 
interest in the salvation of her soul, and even went so 
far as to become a sort of assistant in ^'bringing other 
souls to the Savior. 1 ' 

It was at this point that the real wretchedness of 
my life commenced. I was a sinner, and no good 
actions of my own would count as anything in my 
salvation. I did not believe this, but it was finally 
borne in on me in spite of my mental protests, and I 
ceased to resist or resent it. My own reasoning 
powers I had good cause for doubting, and I suspended 
their use entirely. In doing so I became simply a 
reservoir for the fixed beliefs of those about me. I 
was still a child, and a very young child for such an 
awful doctrine to overtake and overwhelm. 

My fairy stories were all lies, and I was a liar in 
repeating them. I did not know where I was or what 
I was, and was only conscious of an ever present dis- 
tress. It was almost a sin for me to love the children 
as I did, and a fearful sin for me to screen them 
from punishment, as I had formerly done. I surely 
jeopardized my immortal soul every time I told a lie 
for them; and the necessity for these lies was greater 
than ever, as the bigger they became the more mis- 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 91 

chievous they grew; and mother's methods of restraint 
simply aggravated their tendencies, none of which 
were bad, though they all ran in the direction of 
breaking rules established for their restraint. 

I had come under the dominion of a great fear. I 
had lost the foot-hold of self, and was adrift. There 
was a constant internal unrest. It was as if some 
latent power imprisoned in my breast was tearing me 
to pieces in order to escape. 

Even now I wonder what it was. Is reincarnation 
true? I am told that many persons have proof that 
seems positive to them, that they existed in the human 
form before their present incarnation. I cannot say 
this of myself; and yet I have mental idiosyncrasies 
that seem to refer to events that might have occurred 
ages and ages ago. But in trying to recall these far 
away happenings I get the idea that I was not then 
in the human form; or, if in the human form, that 
my brain was of the crudest character; for with all 
such retrospection there comes a numbness of the 
reasoning faculties, and an all pervading fear of 
calamity, as if my life at that time had been in the 
midst of untold terrors. 

Upon being put to bed I rarely failed to see strange 
creatures, part human and part animal, and I was 



92 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

afraid of them. That these forms were real I do not 
doubt. I have since learned that everything is sub- 
stance, and that there is no nothing; therefore, all the 
forms that are attributed to an overwrought imagina- 
tion are substantial forms. Possibly they are thought 
forms, and the imagination may produce them; but 
for the time they exist they are tangible entities. It 
may be they are so frail that a breath can dissolve 
them, and they may not under any circumstance 
possess enough power to lift a hair, but they are surely 
real so long as they exist. I am inclined to think that 
I created the forms of which I was so afraid; though 
there' are persons to whom I have related these experi- 
ences who believe them to be the spirits of animals 
not yet arrived at incarnation in the human shape. 

But, whatever their cause, they followed me, very 
much against my will, far along into my maturer years. 
In spite of the uneasiness they always gave me, I am 
glad to have had my experience with them. I believe 
they have taught me one ol the greatest lessons of 
my life; namely, that thought has power to create 
without the use of the hands, and also without 
employing any visible means in doing it. 

I say "visible" means, because means will be used. 
Things cannot be created without something to create 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 93 

with; but this something is invisible on the dull plane 
of sense in which our faculties now preside. It will 
belong to. the unseen and unexplored forces that 
surely do exist, aud are even now inviting our in- 
vestigation. 

And this suggests the possibility that the East 
India fakir is simply a person, who, by long training 
in one direction, and by an inherited propensity for 
this peculiar training, does actually possess the power 
in some degree to create by his thought. 

It is well known that these fakirs are the descendants 
of long lines of fakirs; men who have given their 
attention to nothing else, and have thus come into 
possession of more power in this particular thing than 
ordinary men. 

At the same time I do not believe that they them- 
selves understand the power they use. From close 
observation of the conditions essential to a manifesta- 
tion of the power, they have learned what to do in 
order to bring about certain results; but I feel 
confident that the law underlying the manifestations 
is a dead letter to them. 

To illustrate: A fakir or magician comes out into 
the open space where five thousand persons are 
assembled to witness his performance. He takes a 



94 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

ball of twine and throws it up into the air; he holds 
one end of the twine, and the ball unwinds as it goes 
up; it goes up so high that it is out of sight. He then 
calls his assistant and tells him to go up and bring 
the ball down; the assistant begins to climb the twine, 
and keeps ascending until he too is out of sight. 
Presently the magician calls to him to come down; 
but he does not come. Then he begins to climb the 
twine himself, evidently intending to bring the boy 
down dead or alive. The spectators meanwhile are 
almost breathless in astonishment. They are intensely 
concentrated on the performance. 

A few minutes after the magician has disappeared 
in the upper air, one leg of the boy is thrown down; 
then the other leg, and an arm, etc., until the entire 
body has been dissected and dropped to the ground, 
where it is covered by a coarse cloth. Then the 
magician descends winding the ball of twine as he 
comes. Last of all the boy crawls out from under 
his covering entirely uninjured. 

Five thousand men have been looking on, and they 
all saw the thing the same way. Did the magician have 
power to hypnotize all this body of men, and make 
them believe they saw things that had no existence? 

It seems more reasonable to believe that he had 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 95 

power to literally clothe his thoughts out of the ele- 
ments present on the ground, and cause them to take 
shape for the time. Furthermore, it may be that 
these elements were human elements furnished him 
by the men present. These men had virtually let go 
of themselves through the power of expectation, and 
had become almost unconscious of their existence. In 
this negative attitude the life element within them 
was, in a measure, under obedience to the magician's 
thought, and clothed his thought, thus rendering it 
a tangible thing, to be seen by all persons during the 
few moments it lasted. 

I read not long ago that an attempt had been made 
to photograph these appearances while they were in 
existence, and that the effort had failed. This may 
have been true or it may not. Bat even if the effort 
were made, it must be remembered that the kodak is 
not a reliable instrument; and that many of the plates 
on which a picture is expected to appear remain blank 
from a failure to get a perfect focus. The fact is, 
this matter has never been submitted to any kind of 
scientific test at all, and no one knows the philosophy 
of it. But there is a philosophy connected with it, 
and it comes within the range of natural law. We 
shall understand it sometime. 



96 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Yesterday I was reading an article on this subject, 
and some of the statements were really so miraculous 
as to be almost beyond the possibility of belief. 
"What nonsense!*' I thought. And then I thought 
again. "Why/ 1 said I to myself, "it is this thing of 
doubting statements without investigating them that 
has so limited our intelligence and our knowledge at 
this time. I am going to quit doubting. Better be 
fooled a thousand times by over believing than to be 
a fool forever by not believing at all." 

At this juncture in came Mrs. Louisa Southworth, 
to wliDm I read what I have written on the East India 
performances, as recorded above. 

"Is it not possible,' 1 asked she, "that the magician 
so concentrates the minds of his vast audience on 
what he is doing, or the thought he is projecting, rather, 
that they see his thought with the mind's eye while 
it is entirely invisible to the eye of the more negative 
body? This, 11 she continued, "would account for the 
fact that they could not photograph it. 11 

Mrs. Southworth's assumption puts the entire per- 
formance on a psychological basis. If correct it would 
be an added proof that thoughts are things, and that 
man can so divorce his finer, less material thought 
from the coarser and more inert, as to see thought 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 97 

forms. If this is true the performance could be pho- 
tographed, but not by the common camera; it would 
require a more delicate invention, which reminds me 
that a machine for photographing thought has re- 
cently been invented and stood the test of experiment 
well. But no such machine as this has been used for 
the purpose above recorded. 

I have been diverging from my story. I must con- 
fine myself still longer to the life I passed in the little 
old town where I was born, and where nearly all the 
friends of those days lie buried. 

I visited this place in 1883, after thirty years 
absence. There was scarcely a soul left of all those I 
had once known. The town had grown into a beauti- 
ful place, full of handsome residences; and the loco- 
motive had superseded the old four-horse stage, whose 
coming and going had once been the leading event of 
the week. 

One day as I was walking along a beautifully 
shaded street (during the visit of which I have been 
speaking) there came a voice behind me calling my 
name, and the sound of hurried footsteps with it. I 
turned to meet the dark, handsome face of a stalwart 
stranger. He caught me by both hands. u Don't 
you know me, Helen, don't you know me?" he 



98 A SEAKCH FOE FREEDOM. 

asked. I did not know him. "Don't you remember 
little Charley Brown? 1 ' I tried hard to recall him. 
"Many's the night, 1 ' he went on, u that I have slipped 
out of the window after mother put me to bed, and 
run to the hall where the dance was going on, on 
purpose to see you dance. I was dead in love with 
you in those days, and your utter indifference kept my 
little fool heart in the most abjectly tattered condition 
imaginable." 

I was a grown young lady at that time, and Charley 
a cub of eight years. That he had recognized meat 
all after so long a period was a matter of surprise and 
congratulation. 

The log house in which I was born was still stand- 
ing, and probably it is there yet. But the town was 
the saddest place 1 ever saw. Nearly all the old 
friends were dead, and those who remained seemed 
even more dead than those who were buried. As a 
feeble light in a dark place simply renders the dark- 
ness more visible, so the small amount of life left in 
these old friends of mine seemed to register the life- 
lessness of their condition. Wherever I met one of 
them the question came up, u Have you seen Nancy 
Marks yet? 11 And then there was a laugh of derision. 
Nancy had been a butt for ridicule in the old school 



A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 99 

days. T went to see her, and soon knew why they 
laughed at her. She was the only soul among them 
who had. gained a new idea in all these years. She 
was so far ahead of the others that they almost be- 
lieved her to be insane. She had been a very homely 
girl. She was now, in my eyes, the handsomest 
woman in town. Her face was radiant with the light 
of a growing soul; and, oh, what a contrast with the 
other faces I met! 

My pretty little sister Lib, who helped me fight aunt 
Sally Linthecum in defense of Gus, was living there. 
She had married a merchant of the town and was 
"powerful fore-handed," living in a house with a man- 
sard-roof. Both herself arid husband were members 
of an orthodox church, and were firmly convinced that 
I was on the straight road to the devil. Indeed, Lib 
had been convinced of this many years before my 
visit. At one time I had sent her some papers that 
were an advancement on the old lines of thought, and 
they had frightened her. I expect she took my case 
to Jesus and agonized over it for a week before she 
made up her mind what course to pursue. Then she 
wrote me. She asked what I supposed mother would 
have thought of my permitting a paper, such as I had 
sent her, to come into my house. It was a long letter 



100 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

full of reproaches, and also of doubts of my character. 
It wound up by reference to my children. She said 
she was sorry for them, and thought I had better send 
them to her to bring up. 

I thought of this when I looked at her children. 
They possessed a measure of superficial good looks, 
but they were a different type from mine. How could 
I help contrasting their faces with the unusual faces 
of the grown up children I had left in California, 
whose whole lives had been an acquisition of new 
and positive truth, and whose physical organizations 
showed the power of such truth to mold the external. 

I went to this place to spend the summer. I re- 
mained there six days. 

There is no doubt that a low state of intelligence 
produces negative people who are comparatively power- 
less to resist disease. At the time I was a child and 
lived in this town, the status of intelligence was much 
lower than it was when I returned on the visit I have 
described. But the new people were strangers to 
me. The old ones had taken the consequence of their 
ignorance, and were either dead or dying. There were 
progressive people in the town, as there are in all 
towns of its size at this day; and I do not mean to 
leave the impression that it was not fully up to other 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 101 

places of its class, but simply to show that the few 
old friends I had left were not among the progressive 
ones, but had stood in the same tracks all the years 
of my absence. 

When I first remember old Fairfield there was no 
preacher there, and no religious privileges beyond the 
range of aunt Sally's slipper; but the dismal day of 
the preacher's advent dawned in the course of time. 
His name was Findlay. He was a gentle, soft-spoken 
man, tall and slender and pale, who used "scriptor" 
language in his conversation wherever he could. He 
came once in three weeks to our town, and preached 
on Saturday night and Sunday morning. I remember 
his asking me one evening after preaching — he was 
stopping with us — if the Lord had blessed the dis- 
course to my uplifting. I was only a little thing, and 
I looked him in the face earnestly, hoping some light 
would shine from his eyes that might make the mean- 
ing of his words clear. Then he asked me if I liked the 
"serming." Heaven only knows what inspired me to 
tell him the truth. It surely was not tr^e force of habit. 

u No, sir," I said, "I didn't like it at all." 

u Why, Helen," said mother, "what was the matter 
with the sermon?" 

I said it was too long. 



102 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

He smiled at mother in a very indulgent way, and 
said to me, but with his look really directed to her, 
"Now, my dear little girl, when you hear me deliver- 
ing the word of Grod again, and feel that I am becom- 
ing prosy and uninterestin 1 , and that it is time to stop, 
you just hold up your hand." 

This piece of facetiousness cost me a whipping the 
very next day. I was sitting close by mother in the 
courthouse, where the brother was holding forth at 
his morning performance, and I was tired. I was 
always tired of the Lord's day and all its practices. 
On this occasion the preacher had hardly reached 
''secondly" out of about nineteen of his headings, 
when I began to wiggle my hand in the most ener- 
getic manner, literally shaking the bench on which 
we were sitting. Brother Findlay saw me and was 
embarrassed, and could hardly proceed. Then mother 
saw me and gave me a look that brought me to order. 
After we got home she took down the switch and paid 
me for my folly in supposing that preachers were 
more truthful than other people. In time I came to 
look back on this whipping as the most salutary and 
educational of any I had ever received. 



CHAPTER VI. 



AT A CATHOLIC SCHOOL. 

On one occasion when brother Findlay came it was 
late, almost time for his Saturday night's audience to 
assemble. Mother had been sent for by a sick neigh- 
bor, but expected to return soon. It was fearfully 
cold arid he had ridden forty miles, having lost his 
way in a snow storm. He was as prolific of scriptural 
sentences as usual. As he stood thawing out before 
the fire he turned to me in a grave way and said: 

u My little sister, I have fasted since mornin 1 and 
would fain beg a little bread and water." 

What he meant was fried chicken, hot biscuit, 
preserves and coffee; but how was I to know? My 
father took the baby out of my arms with unusual 
alacrity^ and a look o£ preternatural solemnity. It was 
a look that always made me uneasy, even though I 
had not then learned that it resulted from an effort to 
keep from laughing. 

I went into the cheerless dining room and set the 
table. I put a pitcher of water, a tumbler and a 

103 



104 A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 

loaf of bread on it. I hurried back and brought Mr. 
Findlay out, and there I left him and went into the 
warm sitting room again. Father questioned me 
apparently in deep dejection, frequently turning his 
face away. Then mother came, and finding Mr. 
Findlay's hat and overcoat, began to question father. 

u He is all right, Lib," father assured her; u sit down 
and get warm; and take the baby; he needs you; he is 
sleepy." 

"But, Caleb, who got brother Findlay's supper?" 

"Helen got it, and" — 

"Helen!" sneered mother. "The idea of her getting 
supper! Did you see what she had on the table?" 

"I didn't look at the table, but he told her what to 
get. Now don't go, Lib; you're cold. I'll go myself. 
You take the baby; he has the colic. Don't you see 
how pale he looks?" 

Mother would not be detained. She rushed into 
the dining room where she found the disgusted 
preacher shivering over his dreadful supper. She 
brought him back to the fire, and made him comfort- 
able while she cooked him a royal meal. 

When it was all over I was threatened with the 
whip. But father put his hand on it where it hung 
against the wall. "Not to-night, Lib," he said. His 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 105 

handsome face, always frank and tender, looked quite 
grave, though not stern. 

I know so little of my father. He was a humorous 
man. He saw the comical side of everything. He 
managed to get a good deal of fun out of the children; 
but we were a little bit afraid of his laugh. He must 
have known this, and being one of Nature's truest 
gentlemen, he often tried to conceal it from us. This 
accounts for the unnatural solemnity of expression he 
occasionally wore. He had his opinion of preachers 
and religion, and maintained it to the last. A few 
times only I heard him express himself about them. 
He did it in the most laughable manner imaginable. 
Even mother could not keep her face straight, though 
she would make every effort to silence him. I never 
heard him speak seriously on the subject but once. 
He was talking to mother. He said, "We used to 
have such good times, Lib, before you joined the 
church and became absorbed in saving souls. It is all 
changed now. You are not the same woman, and the 
children are not the same. There is an awful shadow 
over the household." 

The stage from Carmi came in once a week, and it 
was a grand event. It brought a few letters and pa- 
pers, and occasionally some passengers. We children 



106 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

used to swarm out on the road to meet it, and often 
the driver would take us up and give us a ride. 

Later, when I was considered too large a girl for 
such sport, I would be permitted to go to the hotel, 
and there, sitting on an upper porch with Nannie 
Wood, the hotel keepers daughter, we watched the pas- 
sengers alight and took note of their dress and appear- 
ance. This was among our most exciting pleasures. 

One afternoon while watching, a strange couple 
alighted; or, rather, a strange trio, for there were three 
of them; and perhaps no persons in all the world have 
had so distinct an influence in my development as 
they had. 

But I must go back to circumstances which happened 
before this, and then work up to the advent of these 
new acquaintances. 

I cannot recall my exact age when mother resolved 
to send me to a Catholic school in a distant state. I 
did not want to go, but that was of no consequence; I 
had to go; but I soon made up my mind that I would 
get away as quickly as I could. I knew my parents did 
not know the secret workings of the place, or they 
would not have kept me there. It was impossible to 
communicate with them as to anything derogatory 
to the institution. Our letters were all read before 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 107 

being sent out, and I never received one while there 
that had not been broken open. 

Ordinarily we were treated well enough. There 
was nothing to complain of in regard to our accom- 
modation. The fare, though plain, was wholesome 
and abundant, and our beds were comfortable, though 
about one hundred of us slept in a single, large, well 
ventilated room. I loved the most of the nuns, who 
were our teachers, and had nothing to complain of 
with regard to their treatment. There was one of 
them, however, who was very cruel, and who punished 
us unmercifully. I only had occasion to come under 
her wrath once, and I do not doubt but the event is as 
memorable to her as to me. She was a small woman 
and of Irish nationality. She sat in the common 
school room to preserve order. Occasionally a girl 
was sent into the dormitory, and told to wait there 
until she came. 

One day she sent me up there. On my way I picked 
up a kitten. How it came to be there I have no idea 
since every such thing was carefully excluded from 
the building. But there it was on the stair steps, and 
I was so glad to see it that I could not love it enough. 
I carried it up with me, and nursed it to sleep, and 
laid it on a bed close by. I was not anticipating a 



108 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

whipping in the least, and was quite unprepared to 
see sister Martha bounce into the room with one of 
the cruelest rawhide whips I had ever seen. 

Her quick eye fell on the kitten. "Who brought 
this thing up here?" she asked. 

U I did, sister Martha. Don't wake it up," I pleaded. 

She caught it by the tail, and holding it at arms' 
length began to beat it with such dexterous rapidity as 
to stupefy my wits for the moment; then she threw it 
from the open window, by which I was sitting. I 
leaned out to see the tortured creature drag itself 
under the house as if its back was broken. A whole 
tide of rage was surging up within me, which I would 
have suppressed but for what followed. 

It was summer time and we children wore low- 
necked and short-sleeved dresses. Before I had drawn 
back from the window, she struck me on the bare 
neck and shoulder savagely and with lightning-like 
rapidity. In righting my position I struck my head 
on the window sash in a way that dazed me. I got 
my fleeing senses back with a tremendous effort; an 
effort that nearly cost sister Martha her life. 

What happened I never distinctly knew. I jumped 
on her and bore her down with my weight. I was an 
enormously large child and my strength was phenom- 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 109 

enal. I tore her cap off and pounded her unmercifully 
as I knelt on her back and churned her with my 
knees. Then I came to my senses, and was frightened. 
It was my screams, not hers, that brought the nuns 
about us. The priest came and took me away through 
many rooms and passages blindfolded; and then locked 
me into a dungeon where I remained for several days # 

Once a day a slide was opened and a pitcher of water 
and loaf of bread were placed on a table close by. 

There was a very hard bed in there and a pillow. I 
cannot at all remember what my thoughts were; but 
being a child of fertile imagination and inexhaustible 
hope, I bore the situation with wonderful fortitude. 
I recall this fact perfectly. I did not cry nor waste 
any effort in screaming; I sat on the side of the bed 
a long time, and then lay down and fell asleep. 
When I awoke I was unconscious of whether it was 
night or day. The strain I put upon my eyes to see 
gave me the impression that I was blind. Then I 
relaxed my effort and the strain passed away, leaving 
me in a peculiar frame of mind. 

I had always played with dolls. I have never yet 
seen a child so fond of them as I was. It had been a 
hard thing for me to be deprived of them in coming 
to this school, and often of a night I would take one 



110 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

of my garments and roll it into one and hold it all 
night long. I was horribly lonesome in a dumb wayi 
but bore everything patiently. 

Being in the dungeon and thrown on my own 
devices, I took off a skirt and made a doll of it; and 
oh, what a comfort it was to me! My love nature 
awakened, and with it my imagination. I began to 
see things in the dark. At first what I saw was only 
a series of colored balls descending from above and 
disappearing as they neared the floor. The colors on 
them changed almost constantly. After a time the 
balls came in flocks, and then in showers. In the 
course of a day or two I was surrounded by the most 
indescribably beautiful sights that ever were witnessed. 
Now, it was a fountain of the most graceful form, 
throwing its glittering and many colored jewels up ? 
up, a hundred feet in the air, from whence it tumbled 
in cataracts of such luminous and glorious colors that 
no pen can describe them. There were colors that 
never yet have been seen, and forms that no person in 
real life has conceived of. 

Sometimes for hours there would be a series of 
geometrical figures made out of diamonds and rubies 
and other precious stones. Then again these brilliant 
jewels would be woven into flowers and trees and 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. Ill 

shrubbey. Again, long isles would open in this vast 
maze of glittering shrubbery, and other scenes in the 
distance would appear. I saw nothing that was alive, 
as birds or human beings. It was all still life, but so 
changeful and so wonderful that I did not once tire of 
looking at it. I ate my bread and drank my water, 
but never spoke to the person who brought it. After 
a certain length of time had expired, the priest who 
superintended the establishment came to the opening 
and asked me if I was ready to ask sister Martha's 
pardon for my offense. I refused to answer. He 
waited awhile and then left. It was not long before 
he repeated the visit. Again I refused to answer. 
After this performance had been enacted three or four 
times, the door opened and he came in with a lantern 
and dragged me out quite blinded with the light. I 
was taken to a room on the upper floor where a 
number of the nuns were assembled, and there I was 
forced to promise under fearful threats never to tell 
that I had been in the dungeon. And so this episode 
ended. 

Soon after this, one of the elder girls disappeared 
from the class room. It was said that she was sick. 
She was a sulky, disagreeable girl, and very little 
inquiry was made concerning her. But a few days 



112 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

after her disappearance, I myself was in the infirmary 
quite ill with the mumps, and through a half open 
door I saw her led into the room adjoining mine. She 
was in a deplorable condition, white as a corpse, and 
so weak it took two of the nuns to support her. 

The door was closed between us, but by some over- 
sight it was left unlocked; so I watched my opportunity 
and went in. She too had been in the dungeon and 
the awful punishment had almost killed her. She 
lingered for weeks on the verge of death, but finally 
recovered. 

During this time there was an epidemic of sickness 
in the school, and some of the household servants were 
promoted to the position of nurses. By promises, the 
girl I am writing of, got one of them to furnish her 
with pencil and paper, on which she wrote a few 
urgent words to her father. This was conveyed 
secretly to the post-office, and did its work. Her 
father came and took her home. Later still he sent 
four officers there to investigate the building. But 
they failed to find the dungeon; and everything was 
peaceful once more. I longed to tell those men all 
about it, but not one moment was I free from the sur- 
veillance of the nuns. 

It might be supposed that I had my privileges 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 113 

curtailed after whipping sister Martha. On the con- 
trary, it seemed to be the sister whose privileges were 
curtailed. She was more gentle in the school room, 
and I fancied she was treated less courteously by the 
other sisters. As for me, I was "cock of the walk" 
from that time on. I think it likely that the other sis- 
ters hated her, and were glad she had gotten whipped. 

I cannot tell why it was, but for some reason or 
other I was greatly petted and favored in the school 
by both nuns and the father confessor who frequently 
came among us. Some of the girls got down on their 
knees and kissed the hem of his long black robe, as he 
passed through the school room. All of them arose 
to their feet except me. All I ever did was to hide 
the novel I was reading and gaze on him quietly. I 
had no intention of being disrespectful, but my father 
had been in the habit of rising from his chair when 
his little daughters entered the room, and providing 
us with seats before sitting down again himself. So 
it was simply a sort of second nature that kept me 
seated. My conduct was not reproved; and the priest 
would approach me smiling and shake hands with me. 
I never saw him offer to shake hands with any other 
girl. 

I read my first novel here. It was "Alonzo and 



114 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Melissa." It was a tame thing to me after the 
"Arabian Nights, 11 and the many supplements to the 
"Arabian Nights, 11 that I myself had added. But all 
the girls were reading it and deeply excited over it. 
The only enjoyment I got out of it was in the fact that 
it was stolen fun. I suppose I thought I was trampling 
sister Martha's immortal soul in the dirt by sitting in 
her very presence and reading that trash instead of 
studying my lesson. 

"You dreadful old thing, 11 1 used to think as I looked 
at her; "you know you are afraid to take this book 
from me." At the same time I concealed it from her 
sight quite carefully. 

We were compelled to attend mass whether we 
wanted to or not; and the devotional services of each 
day in the week were excessive. We were made to 
kneel bolt upright for an hour at a time every morning, 
giving the responses to prayers that one of the sisters 
read. How tired we became! frequently one of the 
weaker girls fainted dead away and was carried out 
limp as a rag. I was too strong for any such ex- 
hibition; and in the course of time my knees became 
so callous that I could kneel as easily as I could stand. 

I neglected to tell in its proper place of how — on 
the day Sister Martha sent me up into the dormitory 



A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 115 

to wait for her coming — that I got restless after the 
cat went to sleep and began to prospect for something 
to do. I soon found a decanter of holy water with 
which I was quite familiar, having heard its merits 
extolled by the Catholic girls and the nuns also. It 
had played an important part in saving the sick from 
dying, and in keeping souls out of Purgatory, etc. I 
think I had considerable respect for the stuff, though 
I was not quite certain of it until some two weeks later. 
However, with one of the sudden lapses into imbecility 
to which I think I was subject at that age, I poured 
the water out of the decanter upon the head of a girl 
in the yard below, and then filled it up again oat of 
one of the pitchers. I felt no more compunction in 
committing this piece of diablerie than if I had been a 
Newfoundland puppy. 

Bat when — a few nights after I was released from 
the dungeon — a perfectly terrific thunder storm arose, 
and the priest was sent for to pray and sprinkle the 
beds with holy water, and I saw him using my sub- 
stitute for the real stuff, I was frightened and awaited 
results with great anxiety. As the storm soon stopped 
I suppose the Virgin Mary, to whom the adjurations 
were addressed, did not know the difference; but it was 
a trick I never ventured to repeat. It was not long 



116 A SEAECH FOE FEEEDOM. 

after tliis, in the communion services the priest dis- 
covered that the silver dish which had always held the 
holy bread or wafers to be administered on that solemn 
occasion was empty. I do not remember what was 
substituted for them, nor how the matter ended. 
I do know, however, that neither Emma Ready nor I 
thought they tasted good, and we would not have eaten 
them only we had heard repeatedly that they turned 
to blood on the tongue of an unsauctified person. 
We evidertly wanted to investigate this claim. 

Vacation came and there was a general exodus. It 
had been decided by my parents that I was not to return 
home for another year. This was dreadful for me to 
bear, and I did not intend to bear it. Mr. Ready, who 
lived in Carmi, just twenty-five miles from Fairfield, 
came for Emma in a carriage. I was only permitted 
to see him in the presence of one of the nuns; but I 
communicated with him by means of his daughter. 

There were so many carriages coming and going 
through the great iron gates that day, I contrived to 
slip out and hide by the roadside a half mile away. 
At this spot Mr. Ready picked me up, audit was good- 
bye to that school forever. I left my trunk and all 
I had except the clothes 1 wore, and never recovered 
them, though there was an effort made to do so. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. - 117 

I met my mother in Carmi. She was on a visit to 
my grandfather and grandmother. She had with her 
the baby I had never seen, little Julia; this child and 
her twin sister, who was then dead, had been born a 
day or two after I left home. How I had longed to 
see this new baby, and how I had cried when I knew 
there had been two of them, and only one alive. 

A few years later I was at Emma Ready's wedding. 
She was a girl of great expectations and much wealth 
for that day and part of the country. She married a 
brilliant lawyer, and no one doubted the promise of 
her young life. It was only ten months afterwards 
that she lay in her coffin with her dead baby on her 
breast. 

Is every one of these chapters to end in a grave? 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE DALTON EPISODE. 

It was some time after I got home from the Catholic 
school before the old interests took hold of me again. 
The baby was not my baby, and I did not like it much. 
It had only weighed two and one-half pounds when 
it was born, and at the time I first saw it, was the 
smallest, most inferior little thing I ever looked at. 
Its head was too big and its hands and feet not big 
enough. But it was the spunkiest and the most 
precocious youngster of the lot. Grandfather Ridg- 
way — the father of my mother and of little aunt 
Mary — doted on this poor little, saucy little, ugly 
little fragment of humanity. He would always have 
it in his arms when he was in the house. It could 
talk before it was eleven months old, and walked 
sometime before that. 

Grandfather was a Whig in politics, and seemed to 
take endless interest in the newspapers. I can see 
him with his glasses on his nose as he sat by the 
window with a paper in one hand and this mite of a 

113 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 119 

baby tucked away in his other arm, she reaching out 
as far as possible and wriggling from every position 
he assigned her for the purpose of kicking the paper 
to make it rattle. 

"Now, Jule," he would say, "you must not do that; 
grandpa '11 have to spank. See my big hand?" And 
then he would show her a large, fair hand, correspond- 
ing with the large, fair body that owned it. 

"Me'll pank oo," the little vixen would retort; "tee 
my bid hand?" showing a hand about like a sparrow's 
claw. Then grandfather would laugh a laugh that 
could be heard the other side of town, and roar out 
for mother to come and witness the performance, 
which the graceless baby would enact as often as 
called upon. 

More than once I have seen him go over to the 
saloon, where men were usually congregated, and set 
her on the counter, when he would produce the paper, 
and the two would again rehearse the scene whose 
only claim to comicality lay in the contrast between 
the baby's threats and her weapons for executing 
them. By this time her threats had been so greatly 
exaggerated under the tutelage of those two past 
master generals in deviltry — Lloyd and Ivens — as to 
be actually bloodthirsty and terrifying. 



120 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

"Me'll till oo ; me'll frow oo on ee floor and pull oor 
legs out and pound oo to def wid em; tee my bid 
hands? Oo'd better be dood. 1 ' And all the time she 
was saying these things she would be striking him in 
the breast with blows equal in force to those of a 
mouse's tail; and her little feet — not much bigger 
than a hard shell June bug — would be kicking him 
with indescribable vigor. 

u Aint she got the sand?" he would ask between 
his explosions of laughter. And then he would ex- 
postulate with her, begging her to spare his life, 
which only made her more frantic in her display of 
muscular force. 

I recall a particular day when grandfather had just 
come to our house after an absence of several months. 
The news that grandpa Ridgway had come flew like 
lightning through the town; and if he had been a 
lump of sugar and the children ants, the effect would 
not have been different. They came pouring into our 
front porch from every direction; dozens of them; not 
only the ''quality" children, but poor little distressed 
mites, the victims of the malarious climate and of 
poverty, their faces showing every particle of the 
small amount of sunshine the weakened action of 
their hearts could generate. And it was, "Howdy do, 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 121 

piggy-wees; ha, ha, ha, but grandpa's glad to see you; 
and here's my little Maggie, and here's Mahaly, and 
here's Tom. Well, bless my life! Ha, ha, ha, this is a 
regular ovation; and here are more small people 
coming still;" and he broke away from the cro^d 
surrounding him and strode out with his mighty steps 
and his superb strength to pick up a crippled child 
who was laboring across the street to give him 
greeting. 

"Why its grandpa's little sweetheart, aint it? Its 
my dear little Sallie; and she hasn't forgotten me 
either, has she? W'ell bless her soul and body; and 
she's growing big, too, and heavy; my stars, how heavy 
she is!" And all the time the little lame creature was 
clinging to him with tender eyes full of unspeakable 
love. 

This little one paid the penalty of her frailness 
soon after. But Jule, the hero of so many mimic 
frays, is not only alive and well at this time, but 
crows over the other four sisters because she is the 
tallest one of them all. A small body did not seem 
to count against the irrepressible spirit that infused it. 

Reference has been made to a certain afternoon when 
Nanny Wood and I sat on an upper balcony at her 
father's hotel and watched the stage come in. 



122 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

As the dust-covered vehicle stopped, the door swung 
open and a young man with a large forehead got out. 
Then a baby was poked out to him which he took 
hold of awkwardly; last a woman or child — not look- 
ing more than sixteen — climbed out backwards and 
turning round took a languid survey of the house. 
She had on a white swiss mull dress with pink ribbon 
garniture. Her eyes were large and pensive and dark, 
and her hair was black as midnight and hung in pro- 
fuse curls far below her waist line. She was very 
dusty and "mussy" in her appearance, but she was 
wonderfully pretty and looked more like a fancy 
picture than a real woman. 

Mrs. Wood brought the trio up stairs and gave 
them a room opening on the veranda where Nan and 
I were sitting. The baby kept up an unbroken cry 
that hurt the little mother heart of me; and presently 
from the sound of the voices inside I knew that there 
was more than one of them crying. 

I was never a bold child, but I thought I knew that 
I could relieve the baby, and so I summoned all my 
courage and knocked at the door. "Please let me 
take the baby, 1 ' I said; "I can quiet him; I am used to 
babies. 11 

"Are you? Oh, dear! I am not; I don^ know 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 123 

what to do with him," said his little mother, still cry- 
ing like a baby herself, which she really was. 

I took the child down stairs into the kitchen and 
got some warm water, into which I plunged him up 
to his neck. He was dirty and neglected and chafed 
until the raw flesh was in an awful condition. I 
worked with him an hour, and finally by the aid of 
cooling restoratives and by powdering him with starch 
I made him comfortable and happy. Mrs. Wood 
found some little slips that had belonged to one of 
her babies years back, and brought them to me. Nan 
tore up some old sheets into napkins for him, for 
actually he seemed to have almost no changes of 
clothes at all. 

When I carried him back he was cooing cheerfully, 
and presently fell asleep and slept for hours. 

The next day the baby was crying again and could 
not be soothed. Then this little mother found out 
where I lived, and brought the child to me. She 
looked fresher than on her arrival, but had on another 
ball room costume, her dress being a pink tarlatan 
trimmed with white ribbon. She was evidently afraid 
of mother, and only at home with me. For my part 
I was a little afraid of her; for I saw instantly that 
she was a college bred girl, and I felt my ignorance 



124 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

in her presence. But I knew more about babies than 
she did; and I perceived that she attached so great an 
importance to this fact that she was ready to doff all 
her laurels before my superiority in the only knowl- 
edge she now valued. 

Friendships ripen rapidly between young people. 
My new friend was several years older than I, but did 
not seem to know it. ''You see you know so much," 
she said, u you really might be forty years old. I have 
never seen such true wisdom in one so young. I do 
hope you will like me and be my friend, for I am 
already so in love with you. I have never met such a 
grand girl." 

Now, this was praise indeed, and I drank it in 
joyously. That this beautiful woman, who could 
paint pictures and play the piano and write poems, 
should say such things about me, and believe them 
too, for she did believe them— being but a helpless 
little puss after all — was just the cordial I needed to 
strengthen every faculty of my mind, and to awaken 
new faculties undreamed of before. 

In the story of "Good for Naught," one of my 
literary successes, I have described this Dr. Dalton, 
and I will reproduce the description here: 

"He was educated for a physician. He thought 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 125 

himself a mechanical genius, and really was one, if he 
could have stuck to anything long enough to make a 
success of it. In reality he was fit for nothing at all, 
unless it might be an angel. It is not positively 
asserted that he was fit for that. If, however, the 
absence of evil, the negative virtue of harmlessness, 
together with a happy disposition are the requisite 
attributes, the idea occurs that he might have been 
intended 'to loaf around the throne,' as John Hay 
expresses it, and that he would have answered in that 
capacity as well as a better man. At all events, he 
had no capacity for getting along in this wooden 
world. He was a busy fellow, always working at 
something of no possible utility, and neglecting his 
practice to do it. 

u He made models of impossible machines; he had a 
model quartz mill with ever so many stamps in it. It 
came in time to be used as the family coffee mill — the 
whole family collecting about it every morning to 
watch the little stamps as they pounded the grains of 
coffee into powder. He had a model reaping machine 
which could be made to mow its way through a 
cabbage head, in consequence of which cold-slaw 
became a favorite dish among them. He had a model 
steamship, and other models, constructed out of cigar 



126 A SEAKCH FOB FREEDOM. 

boxes principally, and nearly all of them unfinished, 
or finished so lingeringly that the latter end of them 
appeared to have forgotten the beginning. 

"The doctor made the same impression on an 
observant person that his models did. He was un- 
finished; he was all there, but there was not a solitary 
rivet to fasten his faculties in position; and in the 
general mixing up of him since his birth, nature 
seemed to have forgotten the original intention of 
his design. He had the brightest, most interested and 
innocent eyes ever seen; his forehead was large and 
bare; and as he had but the segment of a nose like a 
baby's, and a rudimentary mouth like a tadpole's, he 
created the belief that he had been born prematurely 
and had never caught up. 1 ' 

At an early age, while yet a college student in 
Louisville, Kentucky, he had run away with, and 
married a pretty school girl who had never perpetrated 
the first useful act in her mortal life. When the 
boy's father heard of it and went after the little fools, 
he found them up four flights in a seven-by-nine 
room under the roof, vowing eternal constancy 
throughout all the heavenly future, without enough 
money between them to buy a scuttle of coal. The 
sight of his helpless boy and the beautiful child wife 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 127 

disarmed his anger, and being a jolly old soul his 
vengeance ended in laughter. 

"Here's richness, 1 ' quoth he; "married in Lilliput 
and keeping house under a cabbage leaf." 

He did what he could for them time and again, 
and finally sent them way out on the borders of 
civilization to get rid of them. 

"I guess you'll not starve, Jack," he said; "there's a 
special providence for fools and children, and you can 
claim protection under either clause of the provision." 

And so they landed out of the stage in old Fairfield 
that summer afternoon, where the doctor began to 
tinker the neighbor's bodies when he could spare time 
from his toys, which was a great annoyance to him; 
so great that he was frequently known to hide under 
the bed when a knock that sounded at all ominous 
came upon the door, while his little wife met the 
visitor and serenely lied about her husband's absence. 
She had been but sixteen years old, while her 
venerable husband was approaching the dotage of 
twenty-one, when the baby put in an appearance. 
And a venturesome infant he must have been to come 
into life under the guardianship of those other 
infants — his parents. And yet, with what must be 
regarded as an inherited recklessness of consequences, 



128 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

he had hurried along like other bald-headed tyrants 
from "No-man's Land," even laughing at the fore- 
bodings of the wise, and conducting himself with an 
irrepressible jollity highly reprehensible under the 
circumstances. 

Mrs. Dalton had a great dread of the mature 
matrons of the place, but she clung to me with an 
intensity of girlish affection characteristic of that 
youthful age. I was surprised and flattered by her 
preference, and secretly thought her the loveliest and 
brightest of human beings — aunt Mary being at a 
young ladies finishing school and quite out of my life 
at this time. 

It is no wonder that Mrs. Dalton captivated the 
awakening fancy of an imaginative child like me. 
She was a new revelation. She could play the piano, 
though there was not one within twenty miles of the 
place; yet she could play it, and that meant so much. 
She had a guitar on which she played, and her voice 
was exquisite. She could compose poetry; real poetry. 
I would not be sure of this only by knowing that 
George D. Prentice of the Louisville Journal bought 
it and paid for it. He was a poet himself and a judge 
of a poem's merits. 

She painted in oil and in water colors, and could 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 129 

make excellent likenesses of people. She often 
painted my picture and praised the coloring of my 
hair and complexion, so that I almost forgot I was 
not the family beauty. She really had very great 
genius for drawing. Her little hands flew over the 
paper, and the beautiful forms of nature sprang like 
magic beneath them. She was a strangely gifted 
creature, this young wife, without one practical idea 
in the world. She knew nothing about cooking, 
housekeeping or the care of her child. I, having 
been brought up in an orderly family, knew all these 
things theoretically, though so far I had not made 
much application oE my knowledge. But now here 
was some one who seemed in a measure dependent 
upon my superior ability; who regarded my few 
practical accomplishments as evidences of amazing 
wisdom. This flattered me, and caused me to attempt 
the dizziest heights of housewifery. Sometimes when 
pressed by necessity I even tried bread baking. How- 
ever, as these attempts were rather too much for my 
natural laziness, I usually smuggled it from mother's 
pantry and carried it to them. 

I remember the first meal in the house after they 
went to housekeeping. I got it. It was about my 
second attempt in this direction, my first being 



130 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

brother Findlay's supper. We had ham and eggs. I 
knew how to fry ham, and felt that there was no in- 
surmountable obstruction between me and the cooking 
of eggs. Mrs. Dalton helped me, doing everything I 
told her to do most obediently. We had a new tin 
coffee pot and made some tea in it. Mother had sent 
down some preserved fruit and a pie and pickles. 
But when we sat down to the table there was no 
bread. Actually the intensity of my chagrin at this 
discovery is beyond description. It seemed as if my 
character was ruined. Ordinarily I did not care 
much what people thought of me; but it was different 
with these people. They had descended into my life 
from another sphere. They brought the glory of a 
big city with them; and I had never seen a city, but 
believed that the wonders revealed by Aladdin's lamp 
were tame in comparison. 

And these people had looked on me as a wonder in 
my way. I dare say I had enhanced their good 
opinion of my practical ability as a housekeeper by 
the use of the "long bow" whenever occasion offered. 
And now I was caught. The affair seemed tragical. 
All I could say was, "I will bring some bread," as I 
snatched my sunbonnet and started up the long dusty 
street. It was too great a distance to go home. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 131 

Dinner would be cold before I could return. Polly 
Gibson lived in the nearest cottage, and she had 
always been good to me; I would go there and ask for 
some. 

I entered her house by the back way. It appeared 
to be empty. The kitchen was beautifully clean; the 
smell of new bread loaded the air. The stove door 
stood open and the golden brown loaves were showing 
fine crinkles on the sides. I did not wait one second. 
I turned them into my apron and ran down the back 
walk and out of the gate and away. I had not been 
five minutes gone when we drew up' to the table 
again. Mrs. Dalton said the supper was perfectly 
elegant, and the doctor praised it also. But 1 knew 
more about that supper than I ever told. 

The disappearance of Polly's bread was a mighty 
event for that small town, and continued to be a 
subject of conversation off and on for years. As there 
were no tramps in those days and no one to suspect, 
the affair became clothed in an atmosphere of 
superstition, and eventually gave Polly a spiritual 
halo, which, though unseen, had a tendency to put 
her in the category of saints, thus increasing the 
public respect for her. If Mrs. Dalton and the doctor 
had their suspicions they never mentioned them; and 



132 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

the probability is that if they had known the truth it 
would only have been regarded as another triumph of 
my practical ability. But I can honestly say that this 
is all the stealing I ever did in my life. Of course 
what I stole from our own pantry and carried to this 
family of children does not count. 

It is inconceivable to what an extent mother would 
have opened her eyes could she have seen how in- 
dustriously I worked for the Daltons. At home I 
could not stir up a spoonful of thickening without 
"making such a muss" that she would rather do it 
herself than clean up after me. Another duty I 
shouldered was making the Dalton's clothes. Had 
any one related this as a fact to my mother it would 
have been received with laughing derision; still it was 
true. I could not be trusted to hem a dish towel at 
home, but here I boldly cut into the raw material and 
brought forth dresses and all manner of garments for 
the baby. It goes without saying that our own baby 
was always with me in my visits to the Daltons, 
otherwise I could not have spent so much time there. 

Little Charley's dresses — the way I made them — 
were models of simplicity. They were mere slips 
puckered into shape with a drawing string in the top, 
and sleeveless. It was a style of dress to be appreciated 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 133 

in hot weather, and the baby frequently showed his 
appreciation of it by snaking it off: over his head at 
the risk of choking himself, and going naked. It 
seems hard to believe, but by the time he could talk 
and walk this young iconoclast, this breaker of 
customs, if not of images, was so thoroughly imbued 
with the family traits as to be perfectly satisfied in 
the garb of Cupid, and but for the compulsion which 
I put upon him would never have wor.n a dress at all. 
"Paint me, mammee," he used to say; u paint me in 
boo and wed stweaks and make me pooty.' 1 

And then this venerable and dignified mother 
would get down on the floor with her paint box, and, 
laughing at the various devices suggested by her 
imagination, would paint his fair, fat little body in all 
the colors of the rainbow; often streaking one leg in 
rings and the other in perpendicular bars or long 
spirals. This afforded her endless amusement, this 
and a huidred other little ideas, so that her girlish 
laugh w{ s not long silent in the house. 

It was no rare thing for me in my frequent visits 
t:> find Charley in the condition described. I made it 
my first business in such a case to wash him all over, 
and compel him to submit to the tyranny of clothes, 
even if I had to slap him a very little in order to ac- 



134 A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 

coruplish my purpose. So it came about that he 
looked up to me and respected me out of all propor- 
tion to the respect he had for any one else. He took 
very little notice of his father at all, but his mother 
was his chief playmate. She sang hundreds of songs 
to him and to me as well — Scotch, German, English 
and Tribh ballads; all the nursery rhymes; snatches 
from Moore, Campbell and Scott never yet set to 
music. She told us fairy stories and love stories, and 
when her supply gave out she made up others. 

If it chanced that I was away for several days I 
always found Charley on my return complete "cock of 
the walk," and ruling things with a high hand. Some- 
times I was a little discouraged with him, and won- 
dered if he would ever get a sufficient sense of decency 
to wear his clothes. One day I had him dressed up 
right prettily and took him to the store, where father 
gave him a straw hat with a green ribbon around the 
crown. He was quite proud of it for a short time, and 
then abandoned it. 

About this time one of our town ladies called on 
Mrs. Dalton, taking her two little daughters with her. 
These children were dressed very showily; and poor 
little Charley stood there entirely naked, looking at 
them admiringly and probably somewhat enviously. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 135 

He felt that his appearance was not up to the pre- 
vailing style. Breaking the spell of absorption into 
which his admiration of the children had drawn him, 
he looked at his mother and said piteously, "Where's 
my hat, mammee? 1 ' 

I suppose souie will wonder what good my associa- 
tion with this family could possibly do me. In the 
first place their influence on me was refining. In the 
second place they had books and knew a good deal of 
the best kind of literature, and were not entirely 
ignorant of science. But the great thing was that 
their helplessness called for my strength, and it re- 
sponded in greater quantities than I imagined possible. 
It was a matter of pride with me to know that I was 
so necessary to them. I grew more capable; I learned 
to sew and cut garments with considerable dexterity. 
I came to making Mrs. Dalton's dresses so that she 
looked lovely in them; and when the doctor's father 
sent them money to come to Louisville and make him 
a visit I made a cloak and hat for her. 

I was foolish enough to entrust her to select the 
material; and what she bought was dark blue goods 
with a white stripe in it. 

"It won't do," I said. "That white stripe makes it 
unsuitable." 



136 A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 

"Oh-! well then we can paint it out," was her sugges- 
tion. And we did. We painted the stripe the same 
color as the body of the goods, and made it up into a 
long, warm cloak that did not look bad on her at all. 

We spent a great deal of time over the paint box 
and brushes, and I was supposed to take lessons, but 
we only played and talked. I can see the little group 
uow. Charley in a high chair and his mother deco- 
rating him. Sometimes she painted a wasp on his 
arm, so natural that he was afraid of it. Again it was 
a humming bird perched on one of his fat little 
shoulders, or, rather, hovering about it, so consummate 
was the skill with which she worked out her design. 
My baby sister and I were at the same table, both en- 
grossed in the proceedings, no matter what they were. 

"Make a 'nake, Henny," was my little sister's most 
frequent order. I made a snake by twisting a piece 
of india rubber into a close snarl and leaving it to un- 
curl itself. 

And where was the education I was getting out of 
all this? 

It was coming to me in many ways. It was not 
alone what was said and done, but what was unsaid 
and undone that was teaching me. Instead of being 
thought for, as in my own family, here I was forced 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 137 

to think for others. The helplessness of these people 
gave me strength and push and a sort of common- 
sense business courage that stands me in hand even 
yet. Besides this I learned to cut garments and make 
them with great skill, and this afterwards made me 
very useful in my own family. As there was no mil- 
liner in the place, I made pretty hats for the family 
out of drawn muslins and silks. These hats at that 
early stage were a kind of cross between hats and bon- 
nets; but they were lovely, or, at least, we thought so 
then. I am sure I had naturally fine artistic tastes, 
and was a great lover of the beautiful; but these tastes 
were improved and developed by contact with the Dal- 
tons. Moreover an element of refinement pervaded 
their conversation and manners, and I was not slow in 
being impressed by it, until, as I began to enter the 
region of young ladyhood it was said of me by the 
few persons in Fairfield, competent of judging, that 
Helen was a "perfect lady" in her manners, and that 
all of Lib Wilmans 1 children were "very pretty be- 
haved indeed." 

To be called a lady-like girl in those days was great 
praise. From what I now gather in my contact with 
young ladies of this time I think perhaps this would 
be considered a very old-fashioned idea. Then, too, 



138 A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 

we were taught how to entertain our guests; also that 
a knowledge of standard authors was essential to our 
social position. 

The intelligence of the place had greatly improved 
as E approached womanhood, and we young girls began 
to take pride in our culture and elegance of demeanor. 
I remember once when aunt Mary was home from 
school for a few weeks she taught me how to enter a 
room gracefully. The only secret of it was coming in 
slowly. She said a certain slowness of motion gave 
the appearance, if not the' reality, of being at ease. 
Previous to this — in my embarrassment — I had come 
into a room where there was company with about as 
much grace as a cow, almost upsetting the furniture 
by my ungainly velocity. And after I was in and 
seated I did not know what to do with myself, es- 
pecially my hands. Aunt Mary changed all this. 
"Come in with quiet dignity, " was her direction, u sit 
down on a chair sidewise; let one hand hang over its 
back while the other rests in your lap, palm Upper- 
most. And don't be ashamed of your hands, be- 
cause — except my own — they are the prettiest pair in 
southern Illinois." And so they were at that time; 
but twenty-five years of cooking and dishwashing 
ruined their beauty afterwards. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



LLOYD, BILLY WILKES AND SALLY START A CIRCUS. 

About this time aunt Mary taught me how to 
entertain company. Our little town was quite gay, 
and we gave and attended parties frequently. 

When the party was at our house, aunt Mary said I 
had no right to indulge myself by talking to the 
pleasantest people in the rooms. On the contrary I 
must seek out the retiring and bashful and neglected 
ones and unite them in conversation with the others, 
making them feel at ease; thus giving them all the 
pleasure I could. She said it made no difference 
whether I had a good time or not; my only interest 
was to see that my guests were happy. 

I suppose all this is very old-fashioned stuff now, 
but at that time our reputations were built on what 
we believed to be good manners, together with a 
certain knowledge of books. 

I think I had quite a good understanding of the 
word u lady," and I desired most earnestly to fill my 
conception of it. Even then I knew that mere ex- 

139 



140 • A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

ternal training could not make any one a lady, but 
that the true quality had its roots deep down in a fine, 
just nature. To be a true lady is to be filled with 
beautiful conceptions of kindness and sweetness, and 
to permit these conceptions to shine through the body 
and permeate the actions. I do not pretend to say 
that I was all this, but simply that I desired to be it, 
and that I probably actualized my desire in some 
slight degree. 

I have dwelt very little upon the growth of the 
religious idea in my mind in these later chapters, but 
it was there all the time, though obscured by Mrs. 
Dalton's influence. Not that she influenced me 
against it; she never seemed to think of it at all, and 
it was not talked of between us. She simply in- 
terested me in other things. It was only at home 
that I was under the cloud of the fear of hell and a 
vengeful God. 

Aunt Mary had accepted religion in her character- 
istic way. She did not doubt its claims at all. She. 
believed in hell and a vengeful God, and thought they 
were needed for other people, but not for herself. She 
knew these terrors were not for her; she was quite 
sure of her own salvation; she believed that her 
absence from heaven would render that charming: 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 141 

abode incomplete. At least this is the way I think 
she felt, and I am sure she never had any uneasiness 
on the subject. She said she intended to join the 
church when she got too old to dance, but not before. 

This settled matters so far as she was concerned, 
but it left me in the same wretched condition. Mother 
had quit dancing, and what dancing I was doing was 
done under the flagellation of an accusing conscience. 

All this time I was not only carrying the burden of 
my own sins, but of my brothers and sisters as well. 
Sometimes I would begin to let my reason operate, 
and then would catch a glimpse of the fact that none 
of us were particularly sinful. Indeed, we were good 
children, and harmonious and loving and generous, 
and gave mother very little trouble. But I did not 
dare follow out any such line of thought as this. 
It was treason to God, who said that all were sinners — 
every one. 

Many and many a night when I would start out in 
my thought to discover what sins I had committed, 
and could find none, I would be sorely nonplused. 
But I always fell back on the assumption that God 
knew, and God said we were all sinners. Then the 
cloud deepened and my heart weakened until it felt 
like lead within me. I am sure that in this one thing 



142 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

I laid the foundation of that which made me a 
physical wreck later in life. 

This weakening of my heart broke up my splendid 
circulation in time, impaired my perfect digestion so 
that every vital organ was underfed, and the whole 
body began to break down. These results were slow 
in coming, however, and I was a middle-aged woman 
before I began to feel their full force. 

I dread the writing of these chapters that have any- 
thing to do with my religious experiences. I must 
live over the same experiences in writing them, and I 
have a horror of them. I really have a greater horror 
of them now as I review them from my present stand- 
point than I had in going through them. I did not 
fully comprehend how death-dealing they were to the 
vital principle at that time. I simply suffered in a 
dumb way, but without knowing the extent of the 
ruin that was being wrought in my splendid physical 
organization. I see now what profanation the re- 
ligion of the age is; I see how it kills as it goes, thus 
working out its own deadly scheme inch by inch. I 
did not see it then. My brain had not ripened to the 
power of such perception; so I simply suffered dumbly 
as an animal might suffer from some dull, slow torture 
it could not get away from. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 143 

If I relate this part of my life in a fragmentary 
manner the reader will understand the reason. I was 
naturally a happy disposition. I was interested in 
everything and could extract happiness from each 
passing event. Trifles were not trifles to me. They 
had meaning. I lived deep down in the heart of 
nature and was content simply to live and grow. And 
this condition — which is one of perfect health — was 
poisoned by the infamous theological rot that pervaded 
the entire mental atmosphere of that time. Let me 
drop the subject for a while. I shall have to come 
back to it oftener than I want to, and oftener than 
my readers will want me to. 

I have not done with my childhood yet. I still 
extract merriment out of my recollection of the ex- 
periences I had with my brothers and sisters in the old 
log house so long ago. The house had grown to be 
an eight-room structure, and was weather boarded over 
the logs, and painted white. It had big verandas and 
was comfortable, and — for that place— quite elegant. 

I suppose most people would look upon our old 
town as the deadest place imaginable; but we did not 
seem to lack for excitement. Everybody knew every- 
body's business, and gossip was more wildly interesting 
than the theatre going of a later and deader time. 



144 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Nobody was more interested in the town gossip than 
I was. I was too eagerly alive not to want to know 
all that was passing. I have an idea that people must 
be very dead indeed before they cease to be interested 
in the affairs of their neighbors. I have not lost this 
interest yet, and never expect to. I think that I have 
been too much interested in them and that it has been 
a source of unhappiness. I have borne their burdens 
to my own grief, not knowing that burden bearing 
is a foolish thing either for myself or others. People 
of wide sympathies flow out into other lives, depleting 
themselves and doing the others no good. 

I still feel this same outflowing, but it carries a 
healthier thought than that of pity. It is now the 
bearer of courage and of the strength that conquers. 

Of course, everybody knew everybody else in Fair- 
field. If a covered wagon stopped in the place long 
enough to water the jaded horses at the old well with 
the creaking windlass and the "moss-covered bucket," 
a crowd of men and children gathered about it im- 
mediately. While the men were questioning the 
owner of the team, we youngsters would be gazing on 
the many tow heads protruding from under the wagon 
sheet. A silent scrutiny, long protracted, was all that 
usually came of these interviews. Only once do I 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 145 

remember being spoken to, and for years I retained 
the remembrance of that little girl as a creature too 
bold to be countenanced by other members of her sex. 
I saw nothing but her head with its unkempt hair; 
her eyes were bright and round and alert; she looked 
like a squirrel, and I still have an undefined impression 
that there was a little brown curly tail raised over 
her back, if only one could have seen through the 
canvas top that hid her body. After looking at me 
with a wide-awake, irresponsible expression for a few 
moments, she said, u My name's Roxy Mariar Turnip- 
seed; what's yourn?" 

I think I jumped nervously. I did so mentally if 
not physically. I was so stupefied by her boldness in 
speaking at all that I overlooked for the moment the 
strangeness of her name. I made no answer, not 
because I did not want to, but because I had nothing 
to say. I was a timid child and could not — all of a 
sudden — address a stranger. Seeing that I did not 
answer, her round eyes began to gather a mighty in- 
tent, and her nerveless little face became rigid and 
brusque. 

"You're proud," she said. "You think you're 
mighty fine, dressed up in a white frock. I got one 
myself in ma's chist, but I won't war it everyday. 



146 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

I'm too keerful of it for that. I don't believe in gals 
as wars their best clothes week days. Then they 
haint got nothin' for Sunday. 1 ' 

A long pause, and then, "You haint got no year 
bobs, (ear rings) and I hev." 

As the wagon rolled along the street I could see 
the little self-assertive face all puckered into dauntless 
resolve to crush my pride, until a corner was turned 
and it was gone. And there I stood helpless, when I 
might have told her that my father kept store, and 
that my mother had a silk dress, and that we had a 
lovely carriage with a pair of horses that were big and 
fat and handsome, and that I had a real gold chain 
and locket. Imagine the bitterness of my regret 
under such circumstances. The only comfort I took 
to myself whenever I reviewed the event, as I 
frequently did, was to decide very emphatically that 
she did not know anything about ladylike manners, 
and that she was so ignorant she mispronounced her 
words; but above all that she was bold, whereas the 
beauty of a girl was modesty, and not to speak until 
she is spoken to. I must admit that this was very 
indifferent satisfaction, and did not at all supersede 
my desire to u use her up" with the most cruelly 
cutting sarcasm; but it was my only resource. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 147 

Mother was a woman of immense vitality. I am 
sure of it simply by recalling her laugh, though I 
have many other evidences of the fact. She was the 
right material for making a famous woman in more 
ways than one, but the time in which she lived was 
against her development. I fear I have created the 
impression that she was ill-natured. Nothing could 
be farther from the truth. 

I never saw such diversity of capacity in one person. 
There seemed to be nothing she could not plan out, 
and then hold in reserve the vitality for executing it. 
And her laugh! Such a variety of things as it ex- 
pressed! It was as intelligent as the speech of most 
persons. It was now kindly and encouraging, and 
now sympathetic, and then satirical; always full of 
meaning. She was fond of her children and proud of 
them. She was probably very much more indulgent 
than I had any idea of at the time. No doubt she 
held us in check sufficiently to make us feel that the 
reins were there, and that it was no use to pull very 
far in a forbidden direction. 

One evening the clouds closed down darkly. It was 
going to storm. Mother got us all in and ran her 
bright, sunshiny eyes over us, taking a mental census 
no doubt. 



148 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

"Where's Lloyd?" she asked. 

"Should think you'd know 'thout askin'," said Ivens. 

"Is he with that Wilkes boy again?" 

"Yes, ma'm, he is; and him and Billy v Wilkes is 
gettin 1 ready to run off, cos both of 'em won't stand 
things much longer; choppin' wood and bein' tied to 
the wood pile, and bringin' in chips and carryin' slops 
to the pigs, an' doin' lots of things; an' I don't blame 
'em. I couldn't stan' it myself, but my sperit's broke." 

The fat thing that made this rather startling 
announcement was sitting on both his bare feet in a 
chair. His round black eyes shone like two diamonds 
with health and vitality; his cheeks were like russet 
apples in which the rich carmine is struggling through 
the soft bronze; his pretty red mouth was pouched 
out, and his double chin formed a cradle, wherein his 
real chin — the one with a dimple in it — rested peace- 
fully. As he spoke, other little reproachful dimples 
appeared and withdrew again; and then repose. 

Father was present. He looked at this youngster 
whose "sperit was broke;" the dancing light in his 
eyes gloomed over with sudden solemnity, and he 
turned his head away. 

"Lloyd's a bad boy," said mother, but with a laugh 
that cancelled the meaning of her words. It was a 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 149 

laugh full of pride for this precocious little imp, and 
for the other one who sat there defending him. 
Father caught the meaning of her laugh, and there 
rose before him a vision of his absent son; a com- 
prehensive vision that covered his whole life from the 
moment the nurse laid the fair twelve-pound baby in 
his arms, down to the morning of the present day, 
when — as he phrased it — he had u got away with the 
whole family in a general blow up"; this "blow up" 
evidently being the excuse for the projected run away. 

Father sat forward, bolt upright, in his chair, and 
smilingly, scratched his head. 

"It," he said, meaning Lloyd; "do you remember, 
Lib, when we went to Graysville to see William and 
Caroline, how the little devil would stand up in the 
carriage all the time, and how he fought you for try- 
ing to hold him? He wouldn't even let you touch his 
dress on the sly; he kept looking round and snatching 
it out of your hands, till pretty soon the carriage took 
a bump and stood still, and out he pitched into dust a 
foot deep." 

"And it's fortunate the dust was so deep," said 
mother. "But wasn't he a pickle when you took him 
up?" 

"A.nd do you remember after that, how you couldn't 



150 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

hold him tight enough to satisfy him? Bat wasn't 
he scared? 'Twas the richest thing I ever saw. That 
was the day he called you an old sinner. 'Hold me, 
mamma, 1 he said; 'now, mamma, take hold o' me 
dwess,' and he gathered up a little piece of his dress 
and crowded it into your hand. 'Now, if oo let do o' 
me, mamma, me'll be awfy mad. Me don't want to 
fall out adain.' " 

"Yes," said mother, "and being as he had tormented 
the life out of me before he fell out, I thought I 
would torment him a little afterwards. So I pre- 
tended to be very indifferent, and would let his dress 
slide through my fingers, till he got so worked up he 
gave me a piece of his mind. 'You mean old tinner,' 
he said. 'Me'll trade oo off and dit anudder mamma. 
Where did me dit oo anyhow?' 'I expect the Lord 
gave me to you,' said I. 'I wish he hadn't a done it,' 
said he, as quick as a flash, flinging a look backwards 
over his little polished white shoulder, 'I wish he 
hadn't a done it; and he wouldn't needer, only you're 
so mean he didn't want you hisself.' ' 

Father laughed hilariously. "He got away with 
you there, Lib," he said; "fact is, he's been getting 
away with all of us ever since. But wasn't he the 
prettiest baby that ever lived?" 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 151 

At this there was a perfect babbie of voices going 
up in protest. It was, "You said I was the prettiest," 
and "you said I was the prettiest. 1 ' Even the boy 
whose "sperit was broke 11 forgot his calamitous condi- 
tion to say, "Papa, you said I was the prettiest;" while 
little Emma pressed close to his knee, putting in 
her claims with her dove-like eyes, even though her 
cupid's bow of a mouth opened not. 

"You were all the prettiest, 11 said he kindly, "each 
in his or her turn. 11 

Presently Lloyd made his appearance, coming in 
with a gust of wind. His hair was all tousled up, 
and his blue eyes were wide open. He was afraid of a 
storm, and the storm was on us. He sat down sulkily 
and pulled his hat over his eyes. We children began 
to ask him about his contemplated trip, but he made 
no answer. To our surprise neither father nor mother 
had a word to say about it, and were evidently at 
rest in their minds, and I believe I may say that 
they were rather unusually cheerful in their talk. 
This surprised me as I knew that Lloyd's escapades 
had given them both no less trouble than they had 
given me. 

The truth is, mother and Mrs. Wilkes had entered 
into a conspiracy. They were not going to frustrate — 



152 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

openly — any attempt of their naughty boys to run 
away. They would try other means. 

The next day Lloyd made up quite a bundle of 
clothes and provisions, nobody opposing him, and car- 
ried them over to Mrs. Wilkes' wood pile, where Billy 
Wilkes was to meet him with a similar bundle. 

Now, Billy had a little sister Sally who worshiped 
him, and who bore all of his snubs with great forti- 
tude, never questioning his right to say what he 
pleased to her; and Mrs. Wilkes told us later how this 
little thing followed him everywhere while he was 
making his preparations to leave. So, watching this 
wonderful brother, she became convinced that running 
away was a great performance, and the one thing de- 
sirable above all other things. Presently she informed 
him that she was "doin' to wun off too." 

"Lawful sakes! You!" said he contemptuously, 
straightening himself up and looking like a prince of 
the blood in this young lady's eyes; k *why, you're a 
baby. You ain't got sense enough to take care of 
yourself yet." 

Sally was deeply abashed by this announcement, 
but rallied a little later, and asked meekly: 

"Tant oo take care of me, Billy?" 

This was putting a new face on the matter. Billy 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 153 

thought perhaps he could. So Sally began to make 
up a bundle for herself. She went to the dirty clothes 
basket, and got one of her mother's kitchen aprons 
and a towel. These she pinned together in one of the 
most demoralized packages ever seen. She exhausted 
the pin cushion in disposing of its stray ends, and 
even then the result was shaky and uncertain, besides 
being so "stickery," she was afraid to handle it. Mrs. 
Wilkes found it the next day at the wood pile, and 
chuckling with merriment she brought it over and 
showed it to mother and the rest of us. 

When these two babies had joined the other baby — 
Lloyd — waiting outside, there arose a dispute about 
the propriety of taking Sally. Lloyd told Billy quite 
plainly that he did not propose working to help sup- 
port her. 

"Yes," said Billy, "but don't you see her'll help us 
more'n all the dorgs and the pigs throwed in? Her'll 
be better'n a Shetland pony. Her can dance and sing 
a song and make two speeches; her's just what we 
want for our circus. Should think you'd have gump- 
tion enough to see that for yourself. 'Sides that, 
she's the prettiest little girl in the world." 

Lloyd seemed doubtful of Sally's accomplishments; 
so Billy proposed to put her through her "paces" and 



154 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

show him what she could do. Sally by this time began 
to see that she was going to star it in a travelling 
circus, and became wildly elated. She sang her song 
in such a joyous, caroling, sweet little voice she really 
would have brought down the house in the best 
theatre in the world. But, as often happens with su- 
perlative genius, her pearls were cast before swine. 
Lloyd gave a sniff of contempt. 

"Her can't talk plain, 1 ' he said; "her's nothin 1 but a 
baby." 

The tears came into her eyes, but her lordly brother 
ordered her to "dry up and cut loose in a dance. 11 So 
she brushed her tears away, and, beginning a little 
tune, she kept step to it very accurately, beating time 
by clapping her hands together. This was so pretty 
and graceful that even Lloyd applauded. Then Billy 
ordered her to "come on 11 with her speeches. The 
first of these was from "Mother Goose. 11 The em- 
phasis with which she delivered it was quite inimita- 
ble, and only a feeble attempt at its expression can be 
conveyed on paper. She stepped out before her 
audience with her curly head well up and her whole 
bearing proud as a peacock (I know, because I was 
watching, together with Mrs. Wilkes, from a hole in 
the kitchen where the "chinking 11 was badly broken); 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 155 

then she began with her exquisite baby lisp, not to be 
rendered in type: 

"Hokey pokey, hanky panky, 

I'm the queen of Swinkey Swankey, 

And I'm pretty well I thank'ee." 

At the last word she swept them a courtesy like a 
real queen, and retired modestly backward waiting for 
another call. 

Lloyd did not approve of the speech. The same 
criticism with which he condemned the song was in 
force here. But the dance was "bully" he said, so he 
thought they would take her. Then they revealed 
their plans. They had three dogs and a pig, and 
Sally, and were starting out for a "show." They were 
going to work their way to New York, where they in- 
tended to stop and live in a house with gold floors and 
diamond windows, and have all the fine things they 
wanted, and go riding on Shetland ponies every day. 

It was now getting on toward the middle of the 
afternoon, and they declared themselves ready to start. 
At this juncture Mrs. Wilkes thought I had better go 
out and urge them to stay until after dinner. 

But no, they did not care for dinner; they had 
plenty with them, and when that gave out they would 
have a show and buy more. 



156 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

"Ah! yes," said I — having been primed by Mrs. 
Wilkes— u but we are going to have a pie, and a cake 
with raisins in it as big as your thumb. What do 
you think of that?" 

Their eyes dilated. "That's bully," Lloyd said. So 
they held a consultation and decided to wait until 
after dinner. As they sat on the wood pile pending 
that pleasant event, the time seemed interminable to 
them; and it was a very long hour, indeed, before they 
were called in. 

After dinner the sun hung so low in the west they 
held another conference about starting, the result of 
which was that they would camp out in a broken- 
down wagon on the edge of town, while Sally re- 
mained in the house that night, where they could call 
for her in the morning and take an early start. They 
had a long walk to the wagon, and when they got 
there were almost surprised and deeply injured to find 
no sleeping accommodations; not that they had cal- 
culated on sleeping accommodations, but simply that 
they had not calculated at all — and the gas was be- 
ginning to leak out of their inflated ideal. 

After a little thinking they stole an old horse 
blanket out of a barn not far away. Then they re- 
membered their three dogs and one pig tied up with 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 157 

bale rope clear out on the other side of the village, 
and it came into their heads that these stock actors 
might be hungry. The next thing in order was to 
feed them. They had almost reached the place where 
they had left them when they happened to think that 
they had brought no food. Here was an emergency. 
They were growing discouraged. It was getting dark. 
In a dumb way they were beginning to realize the 
total depravity of inanimate things. Finally, as it 
must be done, they retraced their steps to get the 
bread and meat out of their bundles. 

They had reached the growling stage of fatigue, 
and went along saying naughty words such as "durn" 
and "dogon," and "I golly," and it was reported that 
one of them said "damn," but they both denied this 
afterwards to their mothers. 

"What are we goin' to do for bread now?' 1 asked 
Billy. 

"I can get more at home," said Lloyd. 

"It's goin 1 to be a devil of a trip, this is," said Billy. 
"I'm nearly tired to death now." 

But they trudged on and got their provisions, and 
returned with them to the spot where their hungry 
dependents had been stationed. Here they were sur- 
prised and disgusted to find the dogs gone. The 



158 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

renegades had not had the charity to liberate their 
cousin in bonds, for he was still there sitting back on 
his tether with the obstinacy of a — of a pig. That 
there was blood on the moon for him that night was 
betrayed by the wicked expression of his eye. Still he 
did not refuse the food; ho ate it to the last bite, and 
then watched them reproachfully and ungratefully. 

By this time it was quite dark, and they had a good 
half mile to travel back to the wagon. They now 
took each other by the hand for protection and scam- 
pered rapidly away. 

They did not undress that night; and so strong is 
the force of habit they did not know how to go to bed 
without undressing, especially as they had no bed to 
go to. Even after they were in the wagon they could 
not sleep, but lay staring in the dark for many hours, 
as they supposed. 

The time — in reality — was not so long as they im- 
agined. They were nervous and restless, preternatu- 
rally alive to every sound that moved the leaves and 
every sigh of the night wind. But after a while as 
they listened in this state of intensity, they heard an 
unmistakable groan under the wagon. With a simul- 
taneous movement they popped the blanket over their 
heads where they had to hold it by main force, so 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 159 

great was the capillary attraction that impelled it up- 
wards; and then they heard another groan. This time 
it was simply awful. It began with the true grave- 
yard sound, but was worse and more of it, ending in 
a double demi-semi-quaver of explosive volume that 
might have resembled the bursting of a long with- 
held laugh but for the horror of it. Anything so 
demoniacal was never heard in that town before. It 
almost shook the planks in the bottom of their bed 
room, and tore its way up through the cracks; the 
blanket over them gave them an idea that they were 
bottled in with this ghastly terror. This was not to 
be endured for an instant; and so, with another simul- 
taneous impulse, or, to avoid tautology, let us say with 
two impulses that were Siamese twins in their kin- 
ship, they sprang over the side of the wagon and ran 
for their lives. 

There was no holding each other now. It was 
u every fellow for himself, and the devil take the hind- 
most/ 1 Billy was ahead. Lloyd's roars were unheeded, 
and gradually died out in the distance. He said, later 
in life, that one of his legs fainted and left him noth- 
ing to travel on but the other leg and his head, with 
a little assistance from his elbows, which were in a 
half fainting condition also. He never could recall 



160 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

-where his hands were. When he reached home he 
found us still up. His appearance among us was 
decidedly tumultuous. He took his seat quietly, and 
to the questions, "What you been do-in 1 Lloyd? What 
makes you look so pale?' 1 he answered but one word. 

"NothinV 

The next morning when Sally opened her blue eyes 
(so Mrs. Wilkes reported) she screamed lustily for 
that mighty man Billy. When he came she informed 
him that she was ready to start; and great was her 
wonder when he told her to u shut up and not bother 
him about such nonsense any more. ,, 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE STORY OF TEST LITTLE HATS. 

How the Daltons disappeared from my life I cannot 
tell. It seems strange that we can remember things 
so perfectly up to a certain point, and then absolute 
darkness rest upon the remainder. 

I have an idea that they never returned from 
Louisville after the doctor's father sent for them. 
But fate kept weaving and weaving and weaving for 
all of us, and I met them again many years after in 
California. But they no longer awakened the interest 
in me they had done in my childhood. The doctor 
had taken to drink. Mrs. Dalton had a heart-broken 
look, and seemed as helpless as a baby in her own 
house, keeping it dirty and wretched beyond descrip- 
tion. Charley had passed from the extreme of 
wearing no clothes to the other extreme of wearing 
very fine ones. But I have nothing to say against 
Charley. He was the best electrician in the state, 
and was employed at a splendid salary. He supported 
the family; but what a family it was to support! 

161 



162 A SEAKCH FOE FREEDOM. 

The money he gave them was like water poured in a 
rat hole. It made no show whatever. 

The doctor died of drink. Mrs. Dalton told me she 
had nothing to live for but Charley. In less than a 
year Charley died. After this I dreaded to meet her, 
but I did meet her. She made no sign of grief as I 
had feared. Her face was as impassive as stone, and 
as gray. The poor little thing was really dead then. 
One morning she did not get up. It was all over 
except the burial, which followed immediately. 

What a comment on life in its present stage of 
development the history of this gifted creature is! 
How lovely it would have been if I could have held 
her for an indefinite period in all the charm of her 
early womanhood as she appeared to me then ! The 
evanescence of these sweet, bright lives is the most 
pitiful thing I know. It was sorrows like this that 
started me to thinking of possibilities far beyond the 
ordinary thoughts of the age and race. Of these 
thoughts I shall speak later. 

As this personal narrative unwinds itself I feel like 
loitering. I see that I am being carried out of the 
region, and beyond the experiences of childhood, and 
I do not like it. There is so much in the child — to 
one who bas anything like a true conception of 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 163 

him — that to pass out of the circle of his life into the 
arid zone of manhood, which is the grave rather than 
the fruitage of his early possibilities, is like abandon- 
ing a mine in which lies concealed the never-to-be- 
revealed wealth that might redeem a whole world. 

Children are so wonderful in their simple natural- 
ness. It seems as if the growing power of the 
earth — that power which produces flowers and fruit 
and all life and beauty out of hidden depths — is in 
them, and speaks through them in all their little 
sweet, innocent ways. 

To leave home with a circus — if I remember cor- 
rectly — was Lloyd's last effort to break from parental 
authority. All of these attempts occurred within quite 
a short space of time. I think the whole series did 
not occupy more than a year or two. But there is one 
of them that I have omitted to tell about. I think 
it came in just after the failure of the young man's 
circus business, in which Sally was to star it over the 
country as the chief attraction. It was an effort that 
might have proved disastrous, but did not, in con- 
sequence of that ubiquitous law which seems to exist 
solely for the benefit of such youngsters. Having 
evolved his plan, he kept quiet about it until circum- 
stances favored him in executing it. One Saturday 



164 A SEAECH FOE FEEEDOM. 

when the town was full of half-drunken men, and 
great excitement prevailed, his time came. He saw a 
mettlesome, high-spirited horse, all equipped for 
riding, tied to a neighboring fence. 

"I'll get on it and ride it to New York right off 
when nobody aint a lookin 1 ; cos what's the use of 
waitin'?" he said. 

And he did get on. However, things did not work 
as he planned. 

Mother was ironing. Lloyd came in, climbed up 
on the far corner of the table and sat very still indeed. 
Presently his quietness attracted her attention. Quiet- 
ness in boys is very apt to arouse parental anxiety. 

"What's the matter?" mother asked. 
. "Nothin'." 

"Are you sick?" 

"No'm." 

"What makes you so pale?" 

"Nothin'." 

"Do you want a piece of cake?" 

"No — yes, if it's got raisins in it." 

The cake was produced, but his appetite was not so 
sharp as usual. 

"What have you been up to?" asked mother. 

"Nothin'." 

"Where have you been?" 

"Nowhere." 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 165 

"I'll bet a thousand dollars you've been hatching 
mischief, if a body could only find it out. Tell me, 
now, haven't you?" 

"Haven't I what?" 

"What have you been doing?" 

"NothinV 

"Tell me immediately where you have been." 

"Aint been nowhere." 

At this moment there was a tumult on the front 
porch. Two or three men rushed in. "Where's 
Lloyd?" they cried in a breath. 

Then they saw him and explained. He, had climbed 
on one of the most dangerous horses in the county, 
they said, and it had run off with him, kicking and 
plunging awfully. Several men had mounted other 
horses standing around and given chase. They had 
overtaken the horse and brought it back, but could 
find no trace of Lloyd. Half the town was out now 
looking for his remains, and the greatest consternation 
prevailed. 

"W'here did he throw you, Lloyd?" was asked. 

"Who throw me?" said Lloyd. 

"The horse; where did the horse throw you?" 

"Wot horse?" 

"The horse you got on round by Dingley's saloon." 

"Didn't get on no horse." 



166 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

"You must be mistaken," said mother to the men. 

"Is it possible that it was some other boy?" queried 
one. 

Lloyd munched his cake silently. More people 
were coming. All of them questioned him. Many 
went away doubting; others felt certain their eyes 
had not deceived them. Pretty soon the schoolmaster 
arrived. He was deeply versed in the hidden ways of 
boys. A life time spent in ferreting out the crooked 
paths and dark mysteries of this labyrinthine institu- 
tion, aided by recollections of his own boyhood, had 
made him almost omniscient with regard to them. He 
asked no questions. He walked about the floor talk- 
ing to mother on all manner of subjects except the 
subject. Lloyd began to feel neglected. At last the 
subject under discussion was horsemanship. The 
schoolmaster it seemed was a good rider; had per- 
formed wonderful equestrian feats in his boyhood and 
passed many a hair-breadth escape. 

"Thinks he's the only feller in the world that dares 
ride," thought Lloyd. 

"Now," said the schoolmaster, "the boy that rode 
that horse to-day knew nothing at all of the science 
of riding. To be sure, I didn't see him as he rode 
through the town, but I am informed on good 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 167 

authority that he was actually frightened almost to 
death, so that his hair stood on end. 1 ' 

Lloyd raised one little paw and smoothed his hair 
down. 

u And his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.'" 

Lloyd put out his tongue and felt it. 

"And that, instead of pulling on the reins as a 
brave boy would, he dropped them and dung to the 
horn of the saddle like grim death. I wonder if that 
could be possible; if the boy did actually drop the 
reins like a coward, and — 

"No,"' said Lloyd, u you can bet your last quarter 
that's a lie. I pulled on him hard enough to break 
his durned neck, and he wouldn't stop." 

Mother looked at the school teacher, and he looked 
at her; then they both looked at Lloyd. He sat on 
one corner of the table with his knees drawn up and 
his hands clasped around them. He might have been 
covered with a good sized water bucket, and there he 
was saying, "I pulled on him hard enough to break 
his durned neck, and he wouldn't stop." 

It was too comical. Mother laughed one of her 
most meaning laughs; the teacher's dry chuckle made 
strange contrast with its musicalness. Everybody in 
the room laughed. u Oh! if his father was only 



168 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

here," said mother; u what would I give if Caleb could 
see him now?' 1 

u Did the horse know you was on him, Lloyd?" 
asked Ivens. 

"If he didn't know more than you do, he didn't 
know nothin'," was the brotherly rejoinder. 

What unflagging pertinacity these young folks 
have. Parents may resolve and re-resolve; but they 
only resolve once; they hang unchanging to the same 
resolution while dynasties vanish and systems wax 
and wane — so to speak; they never let up; the 
mother's resistance wears threadbare in places; they 
perceive the weakening, and with that vitality which 
knows no need of rest they walk in and have their 
own way at last. 

Nine times out of ten the mother has this almost 
ungovernable vital force to contend with entirely un- 
aided by the father of the flock, and she breaks down 
under it. This was the case with us, and I have 
observed the same thing in other families. Men 
refuse to share this responsibility with their wives, 
and they in turn become the victims of the perpetual 
and undirected force of the children. Here is an 
experience illustrative of the fact. 

Scene in front of a neat cottage. A gentleman 



A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 169 

comes through the gate. A very small person slips 
out under his arm, and they stand face to face on the 
sidewalk. Gentleman glances weakly towards the 
house, and calls, "Mamma!" 

There is the flutter of a white frock on the porch, 
and a voice from behind the vines. 

"Well, what now ?" 

"Tootsie's got out/' 

Concealed voice — "Oh ! come off with your helpless- 
ness; why don't you put her back? 1 ' 

Weak-kneed Papa — "Go back in the house, Tootsie, 
and I'll bring you some candy." 

Tootsie— "Me yont do it." 

W. K. P.— "Where you going?" 

Tootsie— "Me doin' wiz oo." 

W. K. P. — "But I'm going down town on the car." 

Tootsie — "I doin' on ee tar too." 

W. K. P.: (In a quavering voice.) "Mamma!" 
(A little stronger.) "Oh, Ma! My God! what shall I 
do? Kate! Kate! I wish I may never tell the truth 
again if she hasn't gone in and shut the door. Well, 
blankety-blank the pertinacity of a baby anyhow! 
See here, Toots, I'll tell you what; you can come with 
me as far as the green trees, and then you can run 
home again, and papa'll go down town." 



170 A SEAKCH FOE FREEDOM. 

Tootsie — u Me aint doin 1 to do it. Me's doin' down 
town too." 

W. K. P. — (Another hope of rescue animating his 
soul, casts his eyes towards the rear of the house and 
sees a servant; straightens himself up into his most 
commanding attitude, and gives directions for carry- 
ing the rebel in doors.) 

In the anarchistic melee that ensues he makes his 
escape, but without one thought as to how the vitality 
of this pretty little creature can be directed into ways 
that will make a heaven of the home where it abides, 
and whose beneficence will reach so far beyond the 
home as to become a special guard against the poverty 
and distress that assail so many families in whom 
this mighty power is suffered to go to waste, or, worse 
still, to become a destructive element to itself and 
others. 

Much thought on this subject has led me to the 
conclusion that there are scarcely any parents who 
have sense enough to raise their own children. More- 
over, the system of isolated households is not 
conducive to the highest development of these gifted 
little creatures, who possess along with their brains 
the natural push, the inherent vitality, to lift this old 
world out of the ruts of dogmatic thought, in which 



A SEARCH FOB FREEDOM. 171 

it has been stranded for ages, and send it spinning in- 
to a perfect wonderland of new and great ideas and 
hopes, all capable of being harnessed to the practical 
needs of our coming humanity. 

But where are Billy Wilkes and Sally and Lloyd? 

Am I too old to write the history of these bright 
young creatures? Really it seems so since I have 
survived the best of them. But Billy still lives. He 
is a rich man and a hard one. He scarcely allowed 
his faithful mother enough to gratify her hunger in 
her lonely old age. He turned his back on Sally all 
through the years of her greatest need. I do not 
know whether he is a happy man or not, for I cannot 
tell what conditions a man of his character requires 
for happiness. 

Sally's lot was the lot of many another woman. 
She married and brought children into the world and 
lived in anxiety, pain and poverty, unappreciated and 
mentally alone. For she was a gifted girl who, as a 
crushed wife, found no outlet for the best part of her. 
She was a body slave to her husband — day and 
night — a man never worthy of even blacking her 
boots. She clung to life for her children alone, and 
died when they seemed to need her most. 

But Lloyd. I was in California when he wrote me 



172 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

that he had joined the army. The news almost took 
the breath out of me; for I am not a sufficiently loyal 
citizen to gird the sword to the bodies of my loved 
ones, as the Spartan mothers did, and bid them go 
forth to conquest. I looked upon war as legalized 
murder, and thought that those who believed in it 
ought to do the fighting. I was not then, and am 
not now, actuated by any false ideas of glory as con- 
nected with the matter. I wrote the boy — just 
verging into promising and beautiful manhood — to 
get out of it as soon as he could. Months passed and 
I heard nothing. I never heard form him again ex- 
cept indirectly. He was one of the victims of the 
Fort Andersonville horror. It was there that his 
magnificent young life perished inch by inch under 
the unspeakable cruelty of the system of starvation 
practiced upon the Northern soldiers by their Southern 
captors. 

The lady who reads these chapters in proof, before 
they are made into plates for electrotyping, has a 
little daughter; and this daughter has little friends, 
all of whom want to hear every word of U A Search 
for Freedom." When the proof sheets come from 
Boston there is quite a ripple of excitement. They 
really think I am writing a child's story. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 173 

But it hurts them fearfully when one of my 
characters dies. That the death of Lloyd and Sally 
should be allowed to finish a chapter was more than 
they could bear. They think I ought to tell the 
story of the "Ten little hats 1 ' right here in this place 
to make my readers u so's they'll quit feeling bad be- 
fore they lay down the paper." There is nothing in 
this story of the hats; and I have no idea that it will 
appear as well in print as when I do it in pantomime 
for the small u tousle pates" who are now putting 
their compulsion on me. But here it is: 

Not long ago I attended a Chautauqua in the 
delusive hope of learning something. I had not then 
found out that these places were run in the interests 
of religion. I was finding it out, however, pretty fast. 
I was on an elevated seat overlooking the ground 
floor, on which was grouped a number of splint 
bottomed chairs, placed there probably for the con- 
venience of the deaf and old and otherwise decrepit 
part of the population. I was waiting for the lecture 
to begin. My hopes concerning the lecture were not 
enthusiastic since discovering that the whole affair 
was conducted on the principle of a grown up Sun- 
day school; for if there was anything on earth I was 
born hating, and had been true to my feelings for it 



174 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

first, last and all the time, it was that institution. 
As I sat there waiting I let my mind run back in 
the past until it came among the days whose happi- 
ness — though not unalloyed — was never very bitterly 
broken except by the advent of the Seventh Day. I 
thought of aunt Sally and her slipper; and of Brother 
Findlay and his "sermings," and of all the boys and 
girls whose presence made that period more vitally 
alive than any later period of my life. It is the alive- 
ness of children that causes us to look back to child- 
hood as the happiest time, and not really the happiness 
of it. 

By the time I had come this far in my cogitations 
the drone of the speaker's voice broke in on me. It 
was a preacher. I did not need to look up and see; 
and as for listening, I felt sure I could find some 
better method of amusement. I had come to listen 
to a scientific lecture, and here I was; fooled again. 

The seats in the meantime had been filling up 
somewhat, and ten little girls, children of campers on 
the Chautauqua grounds, came filing in. I had 
passed a crowd of them when I entered the pavilion, 
and now they had come to hear the lecture. They 
were from four to seven years old; they all had on 
broad-brimmed sun hats, and as they passed by the 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 175 

benches and took seats in the splint chairs I could 
not see their faces, and not much of their forms; 
about all I saw was their hats. 

Ten little girls all in a row; ten pair of heels 
hitched upon the rungs of ten chairs; ten intelligent 
looking hats tilted at an angle which proved that 
they were taking a critical survey of the preacher. 

Those expressive ten hats were evidently gauging 
him to see if there was anything in him likely to "pan 
out 1 ' for their entertainment. 

Something took my attention away from them for 
a short time, and when I looked again they had 
shifted their position by bringing the chairs into a 
circle, and the hats were tipped down in front as 
if the owners were contemplating the toes of their 
pretty shoes. 

Presently one hat quivered, and came to a level; 
then nine other hats came to the same level, and I 
knew that ten pair of bright eyes were looking into 
each other, though I could not see them. 

Again my attention wandered; when I got round to 
the hats once more, after an absence of only a few 
minutes, they were all huddled together, and there 
was little to be seen except the backs and almost 
emptied seats of the ten splint chairs. Some evidently 



176 A SEAECH FOE FEEEDOM. 

profound caucus was in active progress under the hats, 
as I knew by the more than auricular movement of 
the broad brims. 

For the brims dipped and came up again in a 
manner so positive as to defy opposition; then they 
quivered — with emotion probably; and pretty soon 
one of them, the leading hat, perhaps, rocked from 
side to side as if it had put in a clincher that no other 
hat could stand up against. 

Some of the hats giggled; it is a positive fact. To 
use our expressive Yankee dialect, they "snickered 
right eout." Not that they made any noise; they did 
not; and yet they laughed violently. I saw them do 
it with my own eyes. Besides that, laughing is catch- 
ing, and a row of older hats not far away caught it. 

And worse still, while some of my neighbors were 
aghast at the awfulness of this performance, and 
wondering where these dreadful children would go to 
when they died, I saw one hat tumble back con- 
vulsively while a small pair of feet appeared among 
the conclave of remaining hats, where they gyrated 
wildly. 

Here the preacher paused ominously, and took a 
steady look at the hats; upon which they instantly 
got back to their second position. Then he went on 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 177 

with his discourse, whereat the hats became agitated, 
and after a few minutes fell into a hurried consulta- 
tion from which they seemed to derive the satisfaction 
they were seeking. 

At last it became apparent that they had forgotten 
the preacher, and from their wise noddings and shak- 
ings, I felt sure they were discussing previous 
experiences of similar hair-breadth escapes. 

As the subject of hair-breadth escapes is in the 
direct road leading to fearful stories of spooks and 
hobgoblins and squeegicumsquees u wot swallers their- 
selves," I am sure it did so in this instance with the 
hats. For the hats trembled at times, and then be- 
came deadly still; occasionally one of them would 
whisk round spasmodically as if to see what was 
behind it; and then every oije of the other hats would 
do the same thing. 

And all the time the hats were getting closer to- 
gether. They got so close presently that they began 
to impede each other's movements. In this way they 
became less expressive so that I lost much of the 
horror of the tales they were telling. 

But I saw enough to give me a better idea of the 
character of hats than I had ever had before. It was 
the first time I really knew what a hat was. I had 



178 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

imagined it made of straw and other dead stuff. I did 
not know that the girls who made hats sewed their 
own fears and hopes and loves and wisdom — such 
wisdom as it is — and giggles and pouts and all the 
other attributes that go to make up a girl, into them; 
but they do. 

As I observed, some pages back, I am loathe to 
leave the region of childhood. Children are such 
wonderful beginnings of totally perverted endings. 
As beginnings, they are so suggestive of what they 
might become, but which none of them have become 
as yet. Looking at them now I often seem to enter 
into their little lives with my bigger experience 
and — in a sense — to live for them on wiser lines than 
they know — as yet — how to live. 

But I must say, and very emphatically too, that it 
is not the proper thing to try to project our own lives 
through the lives of children. Hands off; they are 
entitled to their own experiences. True knowledge is 
self-evolved, and is the result of the action of thought 
upon the mistakes we make. Leave the children in a 
large measure to their own mistakes. Nothing will 
teach them so thoroughly. Watch them carefully 
that they steer clear of dangerous folly, but otherwise 
leave them alone as much as possible. Let nature 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 179 

grow through them. She knows how to do it better 
than we do. She has power to develop them on lines 
unknown to the creed-warped tribe which we repre- 
sent. She has not exhausted her resources in us. On 
the contrary, we are only the first faint prophecy of 
what she can do in making men and women, if left 
free. 

It must be because children are the unadulterated 
germs of men and women, that I love to watch them 
so. After they begin to enter adulthood, and even 
before, the warping process commences; and as time 
advances the original plan appears to be forgotten. 
No wonder the wise man said: "Except ye become 
as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
of heaven. 1 ' 

The kingdom of heaven is the realm of growth. 
It is the region of endless progression. Cease 
to progress and death sets in that very moment. 
Children represent on the unconscious plane the 
possibilities wc have power to evolve on the conscious 
or intellectual plane. The secret of their fascination 
lies in this fact. They are the immortal Sphynx, the 
understanding of which means the conquest of all 
life's ills and the mastery of death itself. 



CHAPTER X. 



TWO OFFERS OF MARRIAGE. 

I sometimes wonder at the glamour that disguises 
marriage. Young girls look forward to it as the end 
of all their anxieties and the beginning of eternal 
bliss. And yet they see their own mothers — who once 
believed the same thing — sunken into the very depths 
of drudgery and wretchedness, often without a loving 
word from their husbands from year's end to year's 
end. And even these mothers, in spite of their ex- 
perience, are still under the same delusion with regard 
to their daughters, and look forward with what little 
hope they have left to marriage as the ultimatum of 
bliss for them. I can only account for this seeming 
obtuseness of intelligence on one hypothesis. That 
is, that life on the present plane is simply one of 
promises that have as yet reached no fulfillment. It 
is a life of embryonic happiness not developed beyond 
the prophetic germinal point. 

I myself am beginning to be happy; and this 
happiness is increasing yearly; but it is a result of 

*180 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 181 

the higher knowledge which the study of the latent 
forces of mind is bringing me; a growing perception 
of man's ability to master his environment through 
the nnfoldment of native thought. I can look hack 
and see myself when I was submerged in the old 
belittling race beliefs, and I say emphatically that 
there is no happiness in them; nothing but the 
germinal forecast of happiness. They form a period 
in race growth; the hopes they suggest — though 
utterly delusive on the plane of their birth — still 
point to a time of fulfillment on a higher plane. 

The entire past has simply been the seed bearing 
period; the period when children are begotten to keep 
the world populated until such time as human in- 
telligence has reached a point in knowledge where 
there will be no farther need of child bearing; but 
where the vital forces that now produce the child will 
pass up to a higher expression, and perpetuate in- 
definitely the lives of the individuals themselves. 

It is to this plane that thousands of the foremost 
members of the race are now arising. But at the 
time I am writing of, this idea was wrapped in almost 
absolute darkness. 

It is true that in looking back I can see the 
premonitions of its existence in myself. But my 



182 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

intellect — at that time — warped out of all semblance 
of individuality — had no power to interpret these 
premonitions; and so I permitted myself to be deluded 
by the universal belief in marriage as the panacea of 
human ills. And yet I did not believe it. I simply 
shut my eyes to the truths I knew about it, and hoped 
that my marriage would be an exception. 

The race of splendid ''bachelor girls 11 was not born 
then, or I should have been among them. The un- 
married women of my acquaintance were a helpless 
and a forlorn set, and were often looked upon with 
contempt. They did not in the least resemble the 
brilliant, cultured and charming girls who now avoid 
marriage because they prefer lives of independence, 
with opportunities of self-culture, to the fate of the 
generality of their married acquaintances. 

Marriage as it has existed in the past, and to-day 
too for the greater part of humanity, is but a stepping 
stone to the real, the true, the divine marriage. It is 
a step in evolution. It is that which perpetuates the 
race until it shall come into a knowledge of the higher 
marriage. When this is accomplished, marriage will 
indeed bring happiness. 

In speaking of the drudgery of wives I am not 
making a reflection on husbands. Marriage is slavery 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 183 

to both husband and wife all the world over, with only 
here and there an exception. And I am not in- 
timating that true happiness can be found out of 
marriage under existing conditions; but rather that 
there is no real happiness on the animal plane of life; 
and say what you will, we are still living on the 
animal plane. We have not ascended above it yet, 
though some of us are beginning to know that there 
is a higher plane, and we are striking out for it with 
all the energy we can command. 

The race is being prepared through its bitter ex- 
periences for the higher marriage that will not prove 
a disappointment. Even now — almost without know- 
ing the meaning of what it does — it is using every 
device to escape the entanglements and the drudgery 
of parenthood. 

I hear a thousand voices exclaiming, u Oh! but I 
love children." Of course you do; the love of the 
child is but a projection of self-love. Your child is 
the latest and most vital part of yourself; how can 
you help loving it? 

Again I hear you say, "But the mother love is a 
divine thing." To which I reply that self-love is a 
divine thing too; and that it is the redemptive power 
in the human being. Self-love is the germinal point 



184 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

in the man; it is the centralizing factor about which 
all that is related to him through his desires comes to 
him. But to express this self-love in the being of 
another creature is so much waste of the parents; it 
is diffusiveness; it is the opposite of concentration; it 
is the beginning of that self-loss which leads to dis- 
ease and ends in death. 

In saying this I am not trying to make the im- 
pression that in the higher marriage there will be no 
sex interchange. There will still be sex interchange; 
but under the control of the intellect it will not result 
in creation on the animal plane. Man in his growth 
becomes more and more, and not less in any particular- 
He looses no use that he has acquired in his process 
of evolution; and: those uses are the highest which 
contribute most to the expression of his happiness. 
The sex relation will never be disused, but it is even 
now in process of evolving to a higher use than the 
mere begetting of children — namely — the quickening 
into active life of a world of vital intelligence, so 
high and fine and potent that we may not now even 
guess its power. 

It was my fate to go through the ordinary animal 
marriage. It was a dreadful experience, but I needed 
it, and I do not regret it. If I had not passed through 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 185 

it I should have missed the foundation for the most 
valuable knowledge I have acquired. But of this 
marriage I will not speak yet. 

As I approached womanhood my girl friends were 
often talking to me about their lovers. It seemed as 
though they were always in love with some one, or 
some one was always in love with them. The matter 
perplexed me. I really did not know what it meant; 
but it did seem a most desirable condition to be in. I 
thought of it a good deal as I had thought of the 
chills and fever, and longed for an attack of it. 

I had two offers of marriage before I was fourteen, 
which I did not think worth considering. The first 
one came when I was scarcely more than twelve. 
Here now I have a granddaughter just twelve years 
old who seems like a baby to me; but I did not seem 
at all like a baby to myself at that age; and indeed I 
had achieved my full height, and weighed precisely 
one hundred and fifty-one pounds. I was weighed on 
my twelfth birthday in the same room and at the 
same time with a little, old, "pussy" farmer from the 
country named Ham Crumbley. He was all stomach 
with spindle legs and a bald head. We weighed in 
the same notch exactly, which gave me the impression 
that 1 looked like him, or was intangibly connected 



186 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

with him in a manner dreadful to think about. No 
previous event of my experience humiliated me so 
much since aunt Clem found the resemblance between 
old Johnny Young and me at the fitting of my first 
pair of drawers. 

Jim Whitney was not of "our.set," though probably 
he did not know it. It is altogether more probable he 
thought there could be no set so exclusive as not to 
include him; but we knew it; we were quite sure he 
did not belong to the Fairfield "four hundred." 
Jim — besides having a tow head, that we made fun of 
unmercifully — had the u big head" also. His opinion 
of himself was the most colossal psychological struct- 
ure ever built on so frail a foundation. It was 
amusing, when it was not aggravating, to hear him 
tell of the number of girls in love with him, and 
gravely ask advice as to which one he had better 
marry. He was the u orneriest" looking man in 
town, so aunt Sally Linthecum said, and 1 think she 
might have said the state, and still have been within 
bounds. She did not see how he could live in the 
same house with himself, and not just give right 
up and die of disgust. And yet he "actilly, qctilly" 
thought himself a "poragon," he was that "pompeyed" 
in his own opinion. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 187 

Jim dressed better than most of our town boys; but 
he was little and insignificant looking, with a face 
that resembled the blossom end of a cocoanut more 
than anything else. I never dreamed of being the 
favored one of his affections until one Sunday he 
called at our house arrayed more gorgeously than I 
had ever seen him. Mother was present, but after a 
few minutes she excused herself and left us alone. 
She had not got fairly out of the room when all in a 
second I knew Jim's business; and I knew that mother 
knew; and I knew perfectly well that she was on the 
other side of the parlor door listening and choking 
her laugh down. All this I knew without knowing; 
and I actually believe I broke out all over with prickly 
heat, so fearful was the rush of blood to the surface 
of my body, and so instantaneous was the panic that 
seized me. It was another case of Sister Martha. I 
had not in the least regained possession of myself 
when I saw him on his knees before me repeating 
something he had either composed beforehand or com- 
mitted to memory out of a dime novel. I can only 
recall — u 0h, thou most seraphic, angelic being! Thou 
art the sun of my existence towards which my soul 
turns as the needle to the pole. Thou most beauti- 
ful " * * * 



188 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

At this juncture he stopped suddenly, and not 
without good cause. If this little twelve-year-old 
grandchild of mine should do what I did then it 
would not surprise me at all; but to think that I did 
it seems actually an improbable thing. What I did 
was to jump into his tow hair with both hands and 
make it fly like pollen from a dandelion seed pod. I 
snatched it out with such vicious rapidity that he 
could scarcely scramble to his feet. But he did get 
up after a few seconds and rush into the street bare- 
headed; then he rushed back and seized his hat, and 
out he dashed again looking as wild as a hawk. I do 
not think he heard what I had been listening to for 
some seconds — the illy repressed breathings indicating 
that mother was almost in a hysterical state from her 
effort to keep from laughing out loud. 

This offer of marriage did not put me on a level 
with the other girls in any way. I could not boast of 
it as they boasted of their offers, and so I said nothing 
about it; and I told mother flat-footed that if she ever 
mentioned it to any one I would drown myself. I do 
not believe she ever told it, though I am sure it must 
have nearly killed her to keep from it. 

I was fourteen years old when my second offer came. 
This second offer afforded me no more gratification 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 189 

than the first one did so far as giving me a chance to 
boast of it to the other girls. The gentleman from 
whom T received it did not belong to u our set 1 ' either. 

I had been in Salem on a visit to some friends 
there, and was starting home again. The morning 
was as pleasant as could be. It was in the spring and 
everything was coming into leaf, and the air was mild 
and delicious. Salem is forty miles from Fairfield. 
Just now it is coming in for a large share of notice 
from the newspapers as being the former residence of 
Mr. Bryan, the Democratic candidate for President. 
It was a town of not more than five hundred people 
then, among whom were the Marshalls, Mr. Bryan's 
near relatives. 

There were no railroads, and it was a full day's 
travel from Salem to Fairfield. As the stage swung 
around in front of Col. Hainey's residence, where I 
was staying, it was packed full, three on a seat. The 
driver asked if I was willing to ride outside with him. 
So I clambered up and made myself comfortable on 
the highest perch to be had, and away we went with 
four splendid, great, gray horses in front. 

I have tried every species of locomotion from a 
bicycle to an elephant, and it is my belief that there 
is nothing equal to a stage ride. To be sure our stage 



190 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

riding iu southern Illinois was rather monotonous 
over flat prairies and wooded bottom lands, with here 
and there a plunge through some lovely stream; but 
I have had experiences in stage riding the memory of 
which will go with me a long, long time yet. It was 
in the mountain regions of California where I wrung 
from this experience the bewilderingly exalted emo- 
tions that add depth and breadth to the ordinary scope 
of life. Oh! the dauntless joy of the thing; the grip- 
on-fate feeling; the fearlessness — not recklessness — 
far from it, but absolute fearlessness, engendered by 
a sense of mastery for which there is no precedent, 
but which seems to rest on a foundation surer than 
any precedent can give. There is something truly 
divine in this feeling. With me it was a realization 
of my own deathlessness; it was nothing short of the 
temporary externalization of spirit or will; that part 
of me which is absolute; that breath of the infinite 
which cannot die. It came through my body and 
proclaimed itself invincible. 

How many times I have taken the stage at Lower 
Lake, near which place I was living, for the purpose 
of reaching Calistoga, some thirty miles away. The 
soft, magnetic air of that peculiar climate transfused 
my whole being; the beautiful horses were themselves 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. J 91 

an inspiration. Trotting or walking every movement 
seemed to be gauged by the finest steel springs, as 
we travelled along toward the base of Mt. Saint 
Helena. Here we crossed a stream that often was 
only a thread of silver, and again a raging torrent; 
then the slow, laborious crawl up the mountain side 
until we reached the toll house on top. I will not 
describe the scenes that spread out before us, chang- 
ing constantly as we ascended. They were not 
particularly wild, but very varied, and to me lovely. 
There is grander scenery in California than this, but 
this never tired me, no matter how frequently I passed 
over the road. Each grade of beauty in nature finds 
its response in one of the numberless phases of the 
human mind. 

At the toll house fresh horses would be waiting for 
us, one man to a horse. The driver got down from 
his perch and examined the wagon; examined the 
harness on the four fresh horses. One could not help 
observing the fine sense of mastery expressed in his 
face. His conquests had been in the animal realm, 
but they were undoubted conquests; no man ever wore 
that look but there was a reason for it. Swinging 
back to his place the wide awake observer would 
notice the contraction of the muscles in his fine arm, 



192 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

and the splendid breast, whose broad, deep develop- 
ment in a man always gives one a conviction of 
tenderness as well as strength. 

u Tnrri 'em loose, boys. Now then I" And the 
horses were in the air that very instant on a mad run, 
and never would they break step until we reached 
the plain some miles below. Sometimes the coach 
was on three wheels as we zigzagged round one of the 
sudden bends; sometimes it was on two wheels; now 
and then it was on one wheel, and once in a long time 
there were no wheels touching ground as it scooted 
around a turn above some fearful incline. There 
were broken bones and a few deaths on that road, but 
not many; and when accidents happened, the driver 
was strange to the business, and wore no such face as 
the one I have described. 

Poor, splendid Hank Monk was the prince of stage 
drivers. For twenty years he drove every day over 
the Sierra Nevada Range. But one day he was sick; 
he could not go. Presently he became delirious and 
in his burning fever he was on the stage box again 
talking to his old friends, the horses. "Steady now, 
boys; you know this slide as well as I do; go slow. 
What's the matter with the light? Its gettin 1 dark 
long before it ought to! Steady, boys; steady! 11 He 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 193 

was now making strong movements with his right 
foot. Then he rested as if in despair, and with a voice 
so truly tragic it started the hair on the heads of 
those about him he said, "I'm on the down grade and 
can't reach the brake." These were his last words, 
and they were spoken as if the responsibility of lives 
was resting on him, and he was powerless to help. 

The responsibility of lives had been resting on him 
for many years, and he had not ceased to feel it and to 
be true to it. Where is the monument for these 
staunch souls who have never flinched in the face of 
duty? Where but just where it ought to be, close 
locked in the hearts of a thousand nameless ones who 
owe so much to them for the splendid patterns of 
humanity they have furnished. 

But see how I have wandered from that early stage 
ride, when as a child woman I sat perched on the box 
with the driver, perfectly enraptured with the sense of 
beauty forced on me by the flowers and trees and 
running brooks and the banks of pearly clouds. I 
never saw the time when I have not felt the loveliness 
of this lovely world. 

The driver sometimes spoke to me, and I answered 
him civilly, but coldly. He was not of u our set' 1 ; he 
must not presume. Still, with my wide-awake per- 



194 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

ception of beauty I could not help observing the fine 
athletic grace of his form and movements as he let 
himself down or climbed back to the box, which he 
did quite frequently in fixing the harness, watering 
the horses, etc. After a time I noticed him more 
carefully. He was young; hisface was clean shaven; 
his features were of a grand type; his expression 
indicated character; his dress — though of cheap stuff, 
was perfectly clean, and could not at all conceal the 
magnificent proportions of his splendid form. The 
word handsome does not describe him, and even at 
that early age I knew it. I had no respect then any 
more than now for what was considered the ordinary 
masculine beauty; and it was with a judgment ahead 
of my years that I measured him. I felt his su- 
periority, though I could not have described it. 

I saw also that he wished to please me, and that his 
eyes lit up beautifully if ever for a moment my eyes 
met them. But it was seldom that this happened, 
and when it did happen it was simply to rebuke the 
feeling that was growing in him for me. 

The idea of a stage driver daring to fall in love 
with me. He did not know the aristocratic stock from 
which I was descended. I wondered what grand- 
father Ridgeway would say if he knew about it. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 195 

I had been educated in a way to make me feel the 
sacredness of caste quite as much as any Brahmin; 
and the Ridgeways were an exclusive race. So at 
least their boasting had made them appear in my 
sight. Mother had sometimes gone East to visit the 
relatives there; and she talked a good deal of the 
splendors of the wealthy Ridgeways of Philadelphia. 
Old John Jacob Ridgeway who was the confessed 
rival financially of John Jacob Astor; and uncle Tom 
Ridgeway who was very rich and lived in grand style. 

And the tribe of Wilmans was not an inch behind. 
Indeed there were tales of almost royal descent con- 
nected with the Wilmanses. Grandfather Wilmans 
was a German; and Germany was so far away in those 
days that it was easy to credit the old gentleman with 
having been a baron at least. This belief was very 
strong among the people, though I never heard it 
talked of by my grandfather at all. Indeed grand- 
father Wilmans was a strangely reticent man, and 
never said anything to throw light on the reports 
about him. But it is a fact that he did no work, had 
no business of any kind, and drew a large sum 
annually from Germany and lived in great style for 
that time and place. 

So we had quite a large supply of family pride to 



196 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

live up to; and it is no wonder that I should have 
looked upon this young man very much as I would 
have looked on an unusually fine horse. And this is 
just what I did. And yet there was something so 
manifestly distinguished in his face that I hesitated 
more than once before I settled it as a fact that he 
was a stage driver and nothing more. 

He was quite illiterate as his language demonstrated; 
and it was perfectly clear that he was no equal of 
mine, and had no right to think he was. But what an 
astonishingly bright face he had, and how gentle his 
manner was towards me. Each mile of our journey 
added to his interest in me until — except for his un- 
fortunate grammer — he might have been a prince 
paying the most delicate attentions to the princess of 
his choice. 

About a week after I reached home the mail brought 
me a letter from him, and it contained an offer of 
marriage. It was written in a school-boy hand, and I 
do not believe there was a capital letter in it from 
beginning to end. 

The letter was absolutely useless. I could not show 
it to my girl friends at all. I carried it in the bosom 
of my dress for a week with the secret pride that I 
had had a real, sure-enough offer, and yet with the 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 197 

chagrin that it came from a stage driver and was un- 
grammatical in its construction. 

My thoughts for the author of the letter were about 
as considerate as those of a Newfoundland puppy for 
the rag doll it is tearing up. Indeed I did not think 
of him at all, and never answered his letter, and never 
saw him again — at least, not for many years. 

I did see him again, and under very changed cir- 
cumstances. I was married and living in California, 
an overworked farmer's wife with four children. I 
had scarcely been off the farm for years except to the 
nearest village. Something prompted me to go to the 
State fair at Sacramento. My husband, Dr. Baker, 
fought the proposition as usual, but I would not yield, 
and went, taking every chick and child along. The 
opening speech was made by the governor of the state. 
I had taken too little interest in politics to know or 
care anything about the late gubernatorial election 
beyond the fact that the name of one of the rival 
candidates was familiar to me, but as it was a very 
common name I thought nothing of it. 

When the speaker arose he was greeted with great 
applause. I turned cold all over, though the day was 
blazing hot; for right before me, and not very far 
away, was the identical stage driver who had offered 



198 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

himself to me. He was handsomer than ever; not 
with commonplace good looks, but with the look of 
matured mastery, coupled with the original beauty 
that had been his rich endowment from nature. 
There he stood, a fit model for a god, receiving the 
hearty plaudits of the people who loved him, and not 
without cause. And there I sat, a worn and faded 
woman who had passed through enough hardships to 
kill a herd of Mexican mustangs, and who carried the 
trace of her overworked and outraged life in every 
line of a prematurely faded face and form. 



CHAPTER XL 



A MOST WOESHIPFUL HERO. 

Of course, my readers have noticed that this is not 
a connected autobiography. It was not my intention 
to make it such. I only wished to dip into the sun- 
shiny spots of my life, where the green grass was 
growing, and give little incidents that marked stages 
of my progress. 

But there came a long interval where there was no 
sunshine; and though I do not like to write of that 
time, I fear that after a few pages more I shall be 
forced to do so. But even then, along with the 
gloom, I managed to extract a little coloring that 
went a good way toward relieving it. 

I was a happy disposition; or perhaps it would be 
more true to say that I had the most inexhaustible 
vitality I have ever seen in any living soul, man or 
woman. It actually seemed as if nothing could crush 
me. 

Like a child, when hurt to the quick I kept hunt- 
ing something to amuse me and take my thoughts 



200 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

away from the smart. I think this disposition was 
the thing that helped me to bear the bluffs and insults 
I received in childhood with so much indifference. 
They would have hurt, only I could not bear to think 
of them, and gradually schooled myself to indifference. 
I observe that this is characteristic of nearly all 
children so long as they remain children. The oddity 
was that I carried the same thing through all my 
earlier womanhood, and would be carrying it still but 
for the fact that it has merged into something better; 
namely, the knowledge that the opinions of most 
people, and even their actions, are not based on any 
reasoning of their own, but are exercised as the result 
of heredity; this condition making them as irre- 
sponsible as so many automatons worked by wires 
whose fastenings are way back in the unthinking 
past. This being the ease I have really no respect for 
their opinions, and do not care in the least what such 
persons say of me or think of me, any more than I 
care for the opinions of the animals — if they have 
opinions. 

A correct judgment of others will establish the 
independent thinker in a very free position. It is 
because we endow others with a judgment superior 
to our own that their adverse opinions hurt us. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 201 

Of course there are persons whose opinions are 
entitled to our respect, but the number is very small 
yet. The average man does not think. He hitches 
his thinking machinery to the thinking machinery of 
some other person, whose thinking machinery is 
hitched to another person's still, or to some book 
which has the authority of numbers to sustain it, if 
not of brains. And so the masses cling together from 
the very vacuity of thought; and together they fall 
upon the person who dares do his own thinking, and 
in their blind fury they destroy him if they can. 

This is not an overdrawn picture of public opinion. 
It is the most ignorant, irrational thing I know of. 
Look at it from all sides and judge it — not by the 
number of people it represents — but by its true 
character, and then see if you, who are beginning to 
do your own thinking, can afford to be influenced by it. 

The most perfect freedom of all is that which one 
gains by a true conception of public opinion. To 
understand its worthlessness liberates us to a wonder- 
ful extent; gives us a chance to be our own real 
selves; enables the "I" within us to stand erect; a 
thing that very few "IV have done in this world. 

Indeed, I believe I may say that as yet not one has 
quite done so, though a few have approached a 



202 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

perpendicular attitude. When an "I" shall stand 
entirely erect, then for the first time the earth will 
behold a god. 

In 1849 the gold fever broke out in California; or 
rather the fever which had its rise in California broke 
out all over the United States. Our town and county 
were shaken up to an extent never known before. 
Companies organized and made much preparation for 
"crossing the plains. 1 ' My father went; and this was 
the last I ever saw of him, for he died there after five 
or six years. Instead of bettering his fortune he 
was ruined financially by the adventure. His mer- 
cantile business, which had made, him quite a rich 
man for that part of the country, had been going 
down for several years before he left. Setting his 
younger brothers up in business, and paying for their 
mistakes; doing the same for my mother's brothers, 
and going security for everybody who asked him, 
finally brought him face to face with a very perplex- 
ing situation. He thought to mend matters by going 
to the Golden State and picking up a fresh fortune. 
He went, but did not get the fortune, and so put off 
his return from year to year until death overtook him 
suddenly. 

About six months before the California fever broke 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 203 

out, a gentleman took up his abode in Fairfield, with 
whom all the ladies in town were mightily pleased. 
When I saw him first he was walking from the hotel 
to our store. His appearance was something of an 
excitement even to my phlegmatic nature. * He was 
of a splendid height, and magnificently formed; a 
veritable Hercules in strength, and an Adonis in 
beauty. Perhaps what struck me more than his noble 
proportions was his fine clothes; real, sure-enough 
"store clothes," and no mistake, all topped off with a 
silk hat. 

u Store clothes 11 is not a high-sounding phrase now, 
but the very reverse. At that time, however, the 
phrase had reference more to the material than to the 
make. It was before the day of ready-made clothing. 
It pointed the fact that his clothes were not of the 
homespun cloth that our farmers 1 wives manufactured 
into garments for their husbands and sons, but were 
made of fine, glossy, imported and expensive goods. 

There was not a particle of the fop or pretender 
about him. I knew that at a glance. He certainly 
did look to be a very manly man. He interested me 
from the first moment I saw him. It was not the 
interest that men usually awaken in women; it was 
rather that I looked upon him as a curiosity. I kept 



204 A SEAJtCH FOE FREEDOM. 

thinking of him and wanted to see him at closer 
range, just as a child who catches a glimpse of the 
elephant as it disappears through the doors of the 
circus tent wants to get a better view of it. 

It was hot many days before I was gratified. He 
came to our house and begged mother as a great favor 
to board him. He could not stand the hotel; and no 
wonder for it was beyond toleration by anyone but 
some transient customer who had to stop there or in 
the street. 

I had no idea that mother would receive him in the 
family, as she had never taken a boarder before; but 
she did, and gave him the best room in the house. I 
discovered afterwards that every one of my aunts, as 
well as mother, had made up their brilliant minds 
that the Lord had sent this gorgeous individual for 
the special purpose of marrying me. He was a doctor 
and had come to locate. I think he was the only 
doctor in town who was regularly equipped with that 
essential of the craft called a diploma. He had 
graduated at old Ben Dudley's Institution in Lexing- 
ton, Kentucky. He was not a very young man, being 
as much as thirty-five years old, and he was engaged 
to be married to the daughter of the Governor of 
the state. This sounded big; and I expect it put a 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 205 

check on the dawning hopes of my uncles and aunts 
and cousins; but somehow it did not dampen my 
irrepressible spirits. 

I had been taught to look up to men as superior 
creatures, and it was years and years before I dis- 
covered my mistake; and yet the critical spirit was 
wide awake in me, with a strong inclination to trust 
my own opinion of them, and to measure them with 
the same judgment that I measured women. But 
the force of education was too strong, and I was 
almost compelled by the family idolatry of this person 
to feel myself complimented by his attentions. Not 
that his attentions meant anything more at that time 
than a little polite appreciation of my social and 
literary merits, of which my friends were very proud. 
He told us, and told everybody of his engagement, 
and evidently considered it a great feather in his cap. 

I am held for a moment by the words ''social and 
literary, " that I have just used about myself. I 
actually wrote poetry in those days, and it was gladly 
accepted by our one little botched and dreadfully 
printed weekly paper. It was very difficult for any 
one to make good sense of the stuff after it was 
published; partly because the print was so imperfect, 
but principally because there was no sense in it. But 



206 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

it was called poetry, and nobody seemed to know the 
difference; and I was wreathed in glory. If an 
original poem was to be read on the fourth of July 
who but I should write it? If a baby died it was a 
consolation to the parents to have a poem written 
about it. Mercy! how much work it was to write 
one; what cudgeling of brains; what adroit pilfering 
from other poets; no not other poets, but poets; how 
hard it was to work in such expressions as u the Lord 
giveth, the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the 
name of the Lord!" In the first place the words were 
as hard to lead into any correct measure as a lot of 
untrained pigs to market; and in the second place I 
could not forebear some original cogitations about the 
Lord's right to take away what he had once given. It 
involved a question of morality to me that threatened 
to wreck my theology. But always in some way — 
by sheer force of animal will, I expect — I got over the 
difficulties and produced what was required of me, and 
it satisfied my appreciative audience. 

Now, Dr. Baker — for this was my new friend's 
name — was no better judge of my articles than the 
rest of the community, even though he was fairly 
educated; and he too thought me a genius and did not 
withhold his praise. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 207 

Matters stood in this state of gentle admiration 
from him towards me for quite a long time; I cannot 
recall how long. But I did not like him much. I 
tried to, because my entire family were in a state of 
perspiring worship for him, and their condition put 
its compulsion on me to be likewise. But no, he had 
grown commonplace. The novelty of his superb 
upholstering wore off so that I lost respect for it; and 
when the cat had kittens one night in his silk hat I 
was glad of it, though I concealed my feelings and 
put on a face of hypocritical regret to keep mother 
from scolding me. It would have been just like her 
to suspect that I had taken that immaculate head gear 
down from its peg and put it where u Crazy Jane" 
could make use of it; so it behooved me to be sorrow- 
ful; and I was. 

The same sort of compulsion was on me when at 
last he professed to love me. I cannot recall just 
why his engagement with the Governor's daughter 
was broken off; but I believe she married a rich man 
and left him out in the cold. I ought to know all 
about it, for I lived with him a good many years 
after that, and often heard him repeat the circum- 
stances to the coarse crowds he gathered around him, 
and swear over the perfidy of women until even the 



208 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

listening "bull whackers," as the cow boys were called 
then, turned white about the gills. But there is such 
a thing as hearing a narrative repeated so often you 
lose the sense of it, and cannot repeat it yourself. 
And as these particular outbursts had their origin in a 
desire to insult me, I took very small notice of them. 
But to go back to the time of his jilting, I must 
say he did not appear to care then, and fell easily into 
the way of making love to me; a love that I did not 
dare repulse for fear of bringing down the wrath of 
my family on my head. Why, he was a gentleman — 
the best educated man and the finest appearing one 
ever seen in Fairfield! Any woman might be proud to 
get him for a husband. Contrast him with the town 
boys, and see the difference. And here were my 
family from the oldest down, except my father, who — 
metaphorically — were crawling on their stomachs be- 
fore him in the intensity of their admiration, and no 
doubt praying the Lord every night to grant them the 
boon of perpetual relationship through his marriage 
to me. Even Aunt Sally Linthecum 'Tastled with 
God in prar 11 to this same end. She said so after- 
wards. And to tell the unvarnished truth it is the 
only prayer God ever answered for me; and it got me 
into great trouble; trouble that He never tried to get 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 209 

me out of, though I prayed to Him for years after- 
wards, until I got disgusted and took the matter in 
my own hands and easily became liberated. How 
true it is that God helps those who help themselves; 
or, in other words, how much easier one can get along 
without Him than with Him. 

I was not really engaged to be married to Dr. Baker 
when he left with a company overland for California. 
I received one or two letters from him, which 1 con- 
cealed from mother, and did not answer. Thus the 
matter terminated as I supposed; but in reality it had 
hardly begun. 

But something else had begun for us; and that was 
hard times. We were really poor. Father had left 
many outstanding accounts for mother to collect, and 
which would have supported the family if she had 
collected them. But most of them proved worthless. 
Father kept sending money along as he could make it, 
but everything went wrong with him, and he could not 
send much. I can imagine his distress, for I know his 
generous nature. He had never withheld anything 
from his family. Indeed, he loved to have us spend 
money, and not one of us could recall the time when 
he would not have made every possible sacrifice for us. 

It was after the California crowd had departed, and 



210 A SEAKCH FOE FKEEDOM. 

we began to feel the grip of poverty, that I regretted 
how indifferent I had been to every opportunity I had 
had to get an education. I wanted to go to school 
and prepare myself for a literary career. I had been 
flattered a good deal, but fortunately I did not have 
one bit of confidence in the opinions of my friends 
concerning my writings; I knew they were trash, and 
I knew that I had not any of that rare element in my 
composition called genius. At the same time I felt 
sure I had something worth more than all the genius 
in the world, and nobody guessed what it was; nor did 
I define it, though I knew it was within me then as 
well as I know it now. 

How shall I describe it? It was a kind of fortitude, 
a power to bear and endure and never yield and never 
be discouraged, that always rested me when 1 went 
down within myself. It was not courage, but more 
than courage; it was not vitality, but more than 
vitality; it was not hope, but certainty; it was not the 
promise of more life, but the indestructible principle 
of life itself. It was the perfect assurance of success 
in any career I might undertake; it was solid ground 
and rich in the promise of bearing, no matter what 
kind of seed I planted in it. It was the self-hood of 
me,, the invincible U I." 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 211 

The frothy surface me used to go down into the 
depths of this real me and get courage and consolation 
from it; for it was the incarnation of strength in 
repose. Moreover, it was the containant of every- 
thing I could desire. It was the food and drink, 
the "green pastures' 1 and u still waters" of my soul. 
I was at home in it, and I was at home nowhere 
else. 

So, though I knew my poems were trash, I was 
not discouraged because I trusted this — more than 
promise — this spirit of infinite fulfillment within 
me; and trusting it, no blows hurt me except for 
the moment. Whatever struck me struck that 
deathless something that could neither be bruised 
nor killed. 

Now this, in its external manifestation, was a spirit 
of wonderful endurance. It was even more; it was a 
kind of fearlessness that overrode temporary dis- 
appointments, which — taken in connection with my 
sense of humor — gave me a happy disposition and 
made a great laugher of me. 

During these years I had to a considerable extent 
dropped the shadow of brother Findlay's religion. 
The current of life within was too strong to tolerate 
it. I had not reasoned myself out of it, but had be- 



212 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

come too vital for its death-dealing influence to cloud 
me more than a few hours at a time, on occasions of 
church revivals, etc. 

I was thinking more of getting an education than 
anything else. One day I got hold of Madame De 
Stael's "Corinne" and became enthused by it. There 
was something in the book that operated on my 
ignorant mind like wine. I felt that all the barriers 
to my long cherished wish were removed, and that the 
way would now open; and it did. 

There had only been one obstacle all the time, and 
that was lack of money. Where would the money 
come from? My brother Ivens was "printer's devil 1 ' 
in Mr. Stickney's office on a salary of two dollars a 
week, and that never paid. But some undreamed of 
windfall put it in Mr. Stickney's power to pay him. 

The amount was $20. The little fellow brought it 
to me with his sweet dark eyes all aglow, and told me 
I could have it to go to school on. 

Immediately afterwards a neighbor told me that 
she had relatives in Jacksonville, Illinois, and was 
going to visit them, and asked me to go with her in 
the large family carriage. 

Now, Jacksonville was the goal of my ambition. 
It was a college town; and another thing that seemed 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 213 

to point in the line of my desires was the fact that I 
knew a splendid family there who were distant 
relatives, and who liked me very much. Mr. James 
Dickens was a methodist preacher as poor as a church 
mouse, with a heart big enough to compensate for 
the smallness of his purse. I could go there almost 
without cost, and if things did not shape themselves 
my way, I could come home when my friends re- 
turned. 

On my way to Jacksonville I saw my first train of 
cars. The Illinois Central was the only railroad in 
the state; and I am under the impression that it had 
then been in operation but a short time. The family 
and I got out of the carriage when we came to the 
crossing, and looking away for miles and miles along 
the perfectly straight track stretching through the 
seemingly boundless prairie to the far horizon line, 
we saw something moving towards us no larger than 
a man's hat. It was a coming train. I watched it 
increase in size, as it approached, with feelings of 
indescribable exultation and a swelling sense of man's 
power that I had never felt before; and when with a 
rush and a roar that made us tremble for our safety, 
it plunged past with all the windows open and 
passengers waving hats and handkerchiefs at us, I 



214 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

turned insane for the moment — or sane, rather — and 
found myself saying to God, u What ails you that yon 
let man's work beat your own? It is time you stopped 
crowing and went to work to do some practical good." 
Jogging along in the old carriage the remainder of 
the afternoon I became deeply repentant over the 
unprecedented burst of reason that had flooded my 
theology for the moment, and prayed for forgiveness 
as I had very seldom prayed before. 



CHAPTER XII. 



SCHOOL AGAIN". 

Occasionally I pick up a paper and begin to read 
some sap-headed story of college days. I drop it like 
a hot potato, and rush off to one of the books of some 
old scientist to get the taste out of my mouth. The 
insipidity, the almost nauseating egotism of these 
exceedingly young persons as told in the novels 
printed about them, and their verdant proceedings, is 
beyond the power of matter-of-fact people to endure. 

Yet here I am doing the same thing. I would not 
have believed it of myself. 

After all there must be some fault in the way 
these stories are told; some lack of nature in their 
unfoldment. They do not truly represent the young 
people. They "endanger the lives of their clients by 
trying to stretch them up into giants." We feel the 
spirit of exaggeration that conceals and mars the 
real beauty which surely does abound there. The 
college boys themselves, outside of these stories, are 
full of interest to me. It seems as if I can never get 

215 



216 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

done laughing at them and with them; not in the 
way of ridicule, let me tell you, but out of pure 
sympathy in their irrepressible spirits, their nonsense 
and fun. I love them dearly; and when a crowd of 
them boards a street car in which I sit placidly, the 
whole atmosphere changes; the sparkle of champagne 
comes in it; I get young immediately, carrying back 
to this renewed youth a deeper understanding of the 
boys than they themselves have; for I see them 
glorified by the knowledge their latent capacities hold 
in abeyance. 

The thing I like best about the boys is their 
naturalness. Girls become distorted by being made 
to try to appear pretty and sweet. Too many of them 
are always conscious of the public eye. But not so 
with the boys. Through the bur of their uncon- 
sciousness you see their native goodness and sweetness; 
and it is a strange woman who does not feel like 
adopting almost every one she sees. 

When I reached Jacksonville I found my friend, 
Mr. Dickens, who immediately shouldered my re- 
sponsibilities and bridged the way for my entering 
the Methodist Episcopal Conference Female College. 
I suppose it would be offended if I were to abridge its 
title. Mr. Jaques was president; and he consented to 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 217 

let me enter the school without paying the annual 
fee in advance. I was expected to go into the country 
and teach during the three months vacation that 
came every year, and out of my earnings I was to pay 
this bill. Mr. Dickens and his good wife would board 
me and trust the Lord for their pay, which was only 
two dollars a week. I am glad to say that I did not 
have to call on my security, but paid them constantly 
and lovingly by sharing everything I had with them; 
last of all an unexpected piece of good luck that 
happened to me, of which I shall presently speak. 

If I am not mistaken Mr. Dickens 1 salary was only 
four hundred dollars a year. He had a small farm in 
the country near Jacksonville that was rented out to 
his eldest son, Washington who only came home 
occassionally on a visit. The second child was Kate, 
a girl near my own age. After Kate came Benny 
and Jim and Shug. Shug was the youngest. I do 
not recall her true name or know whether she had 
one. Shug was used as a contraction of sugar and 
applied to her because of her sweetness. 

Jacksonville, Illinois, was then the college town of 
the state. It was a beautiful place of ten thousand 
people; peculiar people too. I wonder if the in- 
habitants of all college towns are not in a measure 



218 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

dominated by the superabundant vitality of the 
students, who swarm the thoroughfares and places of 
resort, lead in the amusements and constitute an ever 
ubiquitous element like the air that people must 
breathe, until they become of the same nature that 
it is. 

To me Jacksonville was a city. I had never seen so 
large a town before. The stores were splendid — so I 
thought then — and how Kate and I longed for some 
of the goods on display in the windows. Sometimes 
we went in and made our small purchases and walked 
away regretfully. If I had been a princess royal I 
could not have been treated more courteously. The 
manners of the salesmen were very marked, and I was 
always urged to purchase more. At several places we 
were coaxed to run bills; but for a long time we 
declined to do so. I was well dressed when I left 
home, and for nearly a year I made my garments 
serve me. I had passed one vacation, during which 
time I earned enough by teaching school in the 
country to pay for past tuition, books, etc., at the 
college, and a little for Mr. Dickens; but not a dollar 
did I have for myself. 

Kate would have gone in debt to the merchants if 
her parents had not prevented it. But at last I was 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 219 

forced to do so. Later I became well acquainted with 
a nice young clerk who told me about the system. 
He said the merchants were safe in giving the girls 
goods on credit, and rarely lost a dollar. In a great 
percentage of cases the parents paid the bills; in a 
few cases the girls married, and the husbands, under 
a law then in force, had to pay debts contracted by 
the wife before marriage. It was well understood 
that in any case a debt lay heavily on the mind of a 
girl or woman, and she never rested until it was paid. 
This was a peculiarity the merchants were always 
ready to take chances on. 

For my part I knew how heavily it rested on one 
girl's mind, but that did not restrain me. I began to 
dress beautifully, though not extravagantly; and I 
made my own dresses, having excellent talent in that 
direction. But the better I dresssed the more shabbily 
did Kate and her dear mother appear. So I bought 
clothes for them and the children, and we were all 
very happy, and unhappy also, in consequence. If I 
could only have known how it would terminate my 
heart would have been sufficiently lightened to have 
enjoyed the situation better. 

In the meantime I was making a record in the 
college. I was exercising — without knowing its 



220 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

power — the great secret of the age, of all ages — which 
is that persistent effort conquers, no matter what the 
opposition may be. Nay, more; that it creates out of 
nothing, as it were, anything on which the desire is 
centered. 

I had not been three months in college before I 
felt myself a leader in every branch of study; and a 
social leader also. I was a leader by virtue of the 
reason that I did not care to lead. My head was full 
of an ideal to be achieved. And though this ideal 
was so indistinct that I could not have defined it, yet 
it was always before me like some veiled thing of such 
dazzling beauty I scarcely dared ask to behold it un- 
covered, and was satisfied to leave it in the varying 
cloud tints of its ever changing loveliness. This 
imaginative thing became the polar star of my 
destiny, and took many a fanciful shape before I 
knew what it meant and what it was. 

At the present time, though years and years have 
passed, I only know in part; but it is still my ever 
faithful guide that I never tire in following, even when 
it leads me so far from the beaten track of thought 
that I am momentarily overcome and lost in a sense 
of indescribable loneliness. 

If I had been left alone then to simply grow in the 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 221 

direction of my ideal, I scarcely dare imagine what 
would have been the result. It would have been 
heaven on earth. Of this I am sure; for heaven exists 
here, and men are bound to come into a consciousness 
of it sooner or later. I had it within my grasp, but 
lost it for the time by plunging into the pessimistic 
spirit of the age and taking up the cudgel in defence 
of the wrongs of others. I had not learued that 
people's wrongs are their rights; so long as they have 
not overcome them by intelligent thought and action; 
and so I descended into the chaos that was tearing a 
nation in two, and did all I could to make "confusion 
worse confused." 

It was the well-meant mistake of my friend, Mr. 
Dickens. Slavery was the crying sin of the age. It 
must be wiped out. It was the religious duty of every 
person to use all his power, to crush the monster of 
iniquity. All of which was right enough. It was only 
the methods we used that were wrong. Hammer 
and tongs — fire and sword, instead of the culture that 
unfolds man out of the beast. 

"You, Helen," he would say, "are a glorious writer; 11 
(he really thought so, I am sure; though [ knew quite 
well that he was not capable of judging the literary 
merits of any writings.) "You are a glorious writer. 



222 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

God has committed rare gifts to your keeping and yoix 
must expend them in his service; you must make all 
of your writings run in the direction of the emancipa- 
tion of slavery. 1 " And then he would unload his own 
ideas upon me until my vivid, red-headed temperament 
caught fire and I would write pages and pages of stuff 
that was tense and turgid with the wrongs of a race, 
and with the wrath that ought to be awakened in its 
defense. Mr. Dickens said that such wrath was 
divine; and I was too young to know that every form 
of wrath is a mistake, and can never take the place of 
the calm, cool reason that has a right to control all 
things, and whose mission it is to guide without any 
help from either the passions or emotions. 

My articles were sought by the editor of the one 
anti-slavery paper of the place to whom Mr. Dickens 
showed them. It was a bold man that dared publish 
a word in defense of the slave; but this was not in 
the earliest days of agitation on the subject, or he 
would have been mobbed, as several others were. The 
public had — at the time of which I am writing — been 
swayed to a considerable extent by the still earlier 
pioneer in this crusade, and the people were beginning 
to think deeply, and in a spirit of justice. Neverthe- 
less the idea was not popular, and was not respectable. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 223 

This was several years before the war. It was the 
spirit of the war brewing for the outbreak that every 
one dreaded, and that eventually came. 

President Jaques wisely prohibited me from reading 
these compositions in the school, as even the pub- 
lication of my ideas in the paper was already causing 
him anxiety. 

It had been the habit of the school to give public 
exhibitions monthly, at which times our large hall 
was filled to overflowing. By a sort of unspoken con- 
sent I had been put forward at these exhibitions in a 
way to make me a favorite with the people. When at 
last it dawned on the Faculty that — taking all things 
into consideration — I was becoming too prominent, 
they made an effort to keep me in the back ground; 
an effort the audiences resented by calling for me 
vociferously and persistently; especially those who 
knew how I stood on the slavery question. It was 
evident that the people were taking sides more 
openly than they had ever done; and the amount of 
bitter hostility between the factions gathered strength 
steadily and forcefully. It looked as if I had planted 
a seed that threatened to disrupt the school. A few 
Southern patrons had withdrawn their daughters, and 
others seemed inclined to do so. Nothing could have 



224 A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 

been worse for the financial success of the institution, 
and I saw it and regretted that any feeling had been 
awakened; for I loved President Jaques and never 
had a better friend. Many a conversation have we 
had on the subject, all terminating in the belief that 
neither I nor anyone was to blame; that the curse of 
an awful wrong was upon us, that was justly pushing 
us toward a catastrophe which would prove at once 
our punishment and the slave's restitution. In the 
meantime I refused to answer the public demand to 
appear at the monthly entertainments, and the time 
rolled along to the day of our graduation. 

There were twenty of us in the graduating class. 
Our compositions were limited to a few pages, and 
were as jejune and insipid as such essays usually are. 
All would have passed off well but for a mistake of 
President Jaques. 

A speech that was supposed to be a sort of a brief 
review of the affairs of the college during the past 
year was a part of the programme. This was delivered 
by the President. In the speech he referred to the 
rumor that the school was becoming tinctured with 
the anti-slavery feeling, and denied that this was true, 
claiming that no faintest touch of political sentiment 
had been permitted to enter into it at all. A man — 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 225 

one of the wealthiest citizens in the place, and one of 
the haughtiest social leaders — rose impetuously and 
said boldly that the statement of the President was a 
mistake; that the anti-slavery sentiment in the 
school was dominating everything; and the most 
contemptible part of it was that the Faculty, not 
daring to shoulder the responsibility of its own 
opinions, had put them forth through the pen of a 
gifted but misguided girl — a member of the present 
graduating class — Miss Helen Wilmans. 

I must explain that up to the time of which I am 
writing one could speak in favor of slavery with 
impunity: it was only against slavery that no word 
was permitted — so greatly did the Southern spirit 
dominate every department of our social life. The 
voices of the thousands whose souls were seething in 
an almost uncontrollable wrath, that such an institu- 
tion should be tolerated in a republic that called itself 
"free," were under the compulsion of silence. They 
had to hold themselves in check, and see cruelty and 
injustice piled mountain high and capped with the 
haughty insolence of a people whose pride had been 
fed by triumphs in congress and obsequious flattery 
from Northern compeers, together with the daily 
incense that constituted the home breath of their 



226 A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 

lives, arising from the fears incident to the sub- 
jugated manhood of a race. Government was backing 
this side; the anti-slavery position was treasonable. 
Heavens! what flames of wrath were smouldering 
under that word ''treasonable. 1 ' 

After this accusation made by one of the most 
influential men in the state, President Jaques' courage 
must have forsaken him for the time. He entered 
into an explanation which was surely an unwise 
thing. But even this he could have made without 
implicating me; but in his excitement and weakness 
he blundered into an attempt to exonerate the college 
at my expense. 

He said that from the first he had found it an 
almost impossible thing either to guide or repress 
me; that I had been utterly unmanageable. He 
accused me of ingratitude towards the school, the 
teachers and himself. And much more to this 
purpose. I sat behind him with the other girls on 
the platform and heard it all, for the first time. He 
had never given me a hint of such feeling as he 
expressed for me. On the contrary he had been my 
best friend; a friend whose true tenderness and loving 
pride in me had shown in his eyes and conduct from 
first to last during the two years of my stay there. I 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 227 

had never entered his presence in a single instance 
that his kind eyes did not brighten as they caught 
mine. He was proud of me as a student; tender of 
me as if I had been his own sister; his appreciative 
laugh always responded to my nonsense; and never 
once in those years had I received a word or sign of 
reproval from him. I trusted and loved him. 

After he had finished there was a deep silence, and 
then commotion and confusion. Several persons were 
on their feet all speaking at once. For my part I 
felt bitterly wronged. A complete recognition of the 
whole situation lit up my intellect, and I seemed to be 
pure spirit. I stepped to the front of the stage. The 
wrangling in the audience ceased, and the most com- 
plete silence followed. I said, "If there is no other 
soul in all the world who dares lift voice in defense of 
an outraged and a cruelly oppressed people, I dare." 
And then I went on in a tone of voice that seemed 
perfectly level, only for the slight tremor that showed 
unmistakably how every word was quivering over 
latent fire; and the fire burst forth presently. I did 
not spare the cowardice of the people nor the dastardly 
character of the situation. I said my say to the 
uttermost; said it strongly but briefly; and then I 
asked if I was to be excluded from my share in a 



228 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

collegiate education because I would not compromise 
with the vilest sin of the age? President Jaques had 
never expected it of me. He had never rebuked me 
for my opinions; I denied it here in his presence, and 
could not reconcile the words he had just spoken with 
all his past kindness and gentleness to me. Why, he 
was my dearest friend. I tried to say "I loved him," 
but a choking sob came in place of the words, and it 
was answered by other sobs from the audience. Then 
I gathered strength again and said, u Of all the results 
of a disguised position the worst I had ever witnessed 
had been brought about to-day, when a man whose 
heart was so great and whose life was so pure had 
stood face to face with a sentiment so debased as to 
weaken his manhood until he dared not speak the 
truth." 

Then I sat down, with a swimming head, and can 
scarcely tell what followed. The class song was sung 
and the diplomas distributed, yet not for one moment 
was there anything but the tensest excitement among 
the people. The excitement was pressed down, but it 
was there; and it made one feel as if he were on the 
verge of a volcano in' momentary expectation of an 
eruption. 

Hastily written notes were being passed up to me 



A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 229 

from the audience, but I could not read them; I could 
only receive them and let them fall, owing to the 
nerveless condition of my hands. A girl near me 
took them and gave them to me later. They con- 
tained bank bills for various sums: and one was a 
fifty-dollar "slug" of California mintage, the first coin 
of its kind I ever saw. 

The thing came to an end at last, and I found my- 
self in the midst of a crowd where hundreds of people 
were trying to shake hands with me. But I recall 
that others stood apart and looked at me malignantly. 
Last of all, and that which left the most indelible 
impression, was the face of President Jaques. I 
looked upon it with eyes out of which the light of all 
happiness had departed, to find the same deadness in 
his. He looked as if he had turned to stone. I 
made my way to the door where Mr. Dickens had a 
carriage waiting. I never saw my beloved teacher 
again. 

Oh! the happy hours I had spent with him; oh! the 
rejoicing I had had in his pride in me. Always he 
would come into the class room like a prince, his face 
calm to coldness; glancing round with eyes of swift 
intelligence, simply sweeping the group, his look 
would be arrested when it met mine, and then his 



230 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

face would become illuminated. Even yet I think of 
him tenderly, though his beautiful form has been 
under the sod for years and years. 

I recall one instance when his hopes of my future 
had received reinforcement from an unexpected 
quarter. 

The occasion was this. The graduating class was 
assembled in order to recite a lesson in "Mental 
Science. 1 ' This was the name of the text book. I 
cannot recall the author, but a shallower treatise on 
the human mind and its powers was never written. 
The girls did not pretend to study it, and, indeed, the 
most of them were very indifferent students. But I 
had been quite faithful in the matter, and it usually 
devolved on me to answer the most of the questions. 

"Who knows this lesson? 1 ' I asked, as soon as I 
entered the room. 

"You, if anybody," said some one. 

U I have not even looked at it," I replied. 

"Then may the Lord have mercy on our souls," said 
another girl: and we looked at each other and giggled. 
I had no time to even glance the lesson then, for the 
door opened and President Jaques came in and 
another gentleman with him. The questions began 
and none of us knew anything. Mr. Jaques was 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 231 

embarrassed. At length he said to me, "Miss Wil- 
mans, it is unusual for you to put your teacher to 
shame by such utter neglect as this." 

I said, "I did not think of putting you to shame, 
Mr. Jaques. My only thought was that I had had 
enough of this book, and did not care to waste more 
time on it." 

Then the strange gentleman said, "So you do not 
approve of the book; what is the matter with it?" 

As I looked at him he smiled, and there was my 
mother's smile exactly. Then I saw that his features 
were like hers, and that in every particular he might 
have been her twin brother, the resemblance between 
them was so striking. My heart warmed towards 
him instantly, and I did not feel the least hesitation 
in talking to him. I told him there was not a particle 
of sense in the book from beginning to end; that the 
author had invented a theory and had distorted facts 
to fit it. He asked many questions, and T answered 
them in a way that seemed to please him. His kind 
eyes took on a look of the most genial interest. He got 
out a small note book and put down two or three 
things I said. 

The hour ended and the class was dismissed. As 
we were passing out Mr. Jaques made a gesture for 



232 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

me to stop. I did so, standing close to the quiet — 
almost plain looking man whose accidental re- 
semblance to my mother awakened so much love in 
me. When the door closed I was formally introduced. 
The name dazed me. Even then it was wreathed 
with glory. I think I turned pale when I put out my 
hand and felt it clasped in that of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. 

But he was saying something earnestly and kindly. 
I would not have missed hearing it for much. He 
was asking for my full name. "I want it," he said, 
"because the world will ring with it some day." 

And it was this endorsement of me that President 
Jaques valued so greatly. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



A BOY LOVER. 

When T saw for the last time the stony, impassive 
face of my beloved teacher, I was passing out of the 
college hall forever. There was a carriage waiting, 
and with Kate and Mr. Dickens I was driven away. 

The commotion occasioned by the graduation ex- 
ercises was great. The town was all excitement. I 
got both praised and abused, and it was kept up so 
long that for weeks I was afraid to look through any 
newspaper for fear of stumbling on my own name. 
For the circumstances spread, and the press reported 
them and took sides. 

Night after night I was serenaded; and there were 
songs and music composed to fit the occasion. Oh! 
how tired I was of it. I wanted to go straight home, 
but Mr. Dickens — to whom I was as obedient as a 
child — would not consent. One good thing for me 
came of all the commotion. I had quite a little sum 
of money given me on the day I graduated, and more 

233 



234 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

had been sent me. I began to hunt up my store bills 
in order to pay them; but every dollar was paid, and I 
never knew who did it. 

Some two years previous to my going to Jackson- 
ville, my brother Gus had gone to St. Louis, Mo., to 
attend a medical school. After completing the course 
he went to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and located. The 
town was then a mere village; the whole state was 
new; it was almost the far West. Gus was an exceed- 
ingly attractive young man. He was handsome, 
gentlemanly, modest, yet self-centered and courageous. 
He immediately stepped into a fine practice. In less 
than a year he had purchased one of the best dwelling 
houses in the place, and had brought my mother and 
the younger children to him. 

Mother would have been very happy in these days 
but for my father's absence, which was a constant 
source of sorrow to her. It was this feeling acting 
upon* other feelings that intensified her religious 
sentiments, and caused her to become almost fanatical 
on the subject. When at last I broke away from the 
influence of Mr. Dickens and the loving care of his 
wife, and went to my mother in her new home, I was 
chilled and repelled by the atmosphere that emanated 
from her. Gus was used to it and indifferent to it. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 235 

Lib was impervious to any special influences, not be- 
ing a thinker at all, and having taken mother's 
advice and joined the church, after which she sank 
into the lethargy of considering herself all right. 

Emma was just about grown, and she certainly was 
very beautiful and lovely; and the other little girls, 
Julia and Clem, were sweet children. But it was the 
deadest household I ever saw. I began to wonder 
how I should live there long. I resolved that I would 
not do so, and began to hunt for a situation where I 
could teach. 1 at length had an offer from an 
academy at Griggsville, 111. This place was not far 
from Jacksonville. I accepted it and agreed to be 
there at the opening of the next term, some two 
months away. 

The deadness of our household atmosphere was 
something so palpable I cannot see how any person 
could fail to notice it. Gus was changed. Lloyd and 
Ivens had learned the printer's trade before this, and 
had situations far from home, so that I did not see 
them at all on this visit. 

What change had taken place in me I do not know; 
for I am sure that I had changed quite as much as 
any of the other members of the family. I was no 
longer one of them. They did not seem to know me, 



236 A SEA.RCH FOR FREEDOM. 

and had no particular interest in me. Emma was 
kept in the kitchen the most of the time, and 1 pitied 
her. The two little ones were found of evenings out 
on the doorsteps silently watching the stars, their 
little souls in a strange maze of ignorance. I dis- 
covered that they had not the faintest N idea of 
astronomy, and so I began to sit there with them and 
teach them what I knew. But do what I would the 
cloud I have spoken of never lifted. Mother held 
family prayers morning and evening, and practiced all 
the religious exercises in vogue; and I was used to it 
and thought it all right, and would not have been 
satisfied without it; but there was an undercurrent of 
something somewhere that seemed to be insidiously 
stealing my vitality, until T became so weak I could 
scarcely climb the stairs in doing the housework. 

What other influences may have aided in producing 
my condition I cannot tell; but it was one of the 
great cholera years. In the cities people were dying 
fast, and a widespread epidemic of fear was in the 
country. 

One morning early I dressed and went down to the 
basement kitchen to help Emma, who seemed to be 
chief household servant. There was a bed room 
opening off the common sitting room, and it was here 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 237 

my mother slept. The door was open and I looked in. 
The room was in the greatest disorder. Mother tried 
to speak to me, but could not do so except with her 
eyes, from which her whole soul looked. I have 
never seen so much expression in any other eyes, no, 
never in all my life. 

She had been stricken down with cholera so sud- 
denly that it had been impossible for her to let us, 
who slept on the floor above, know her condition. 
Emma had passed the open door of the room only a 
few minutes before ; but had not thought to look in. 
I aroused the household and in a short time every 
doctor in town was there. It was too late. She 
lingered a few hours and died. 

The one thing that haunted me for years concern- 
ing her death was the look with which she followed 
me wherever I went. If I passed beyond her range of 
vision her eyes were strained in my direction until I 
came again within it. What did she want to say? I 
thought she wished me to promise that I would not 
desert the children. I put my arms around little 
Clem and looked at her. A light broke over her face; 
I was never to desert that child; and I never did. 

She had no sooner found that I understood her than 
her eyes wandered to the other faces. Gus asked her 



238 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

if she was willing to go, and she nodded and smiled 
yes; and in another moment she was gone. Fourteen 
other persons lay dead of cholera in the town that 
same day. 

My mother's death was an awful shock. She lay 
there with her dimpled white hands and her youthful 
face — for she was little more than a child when I was 
born — and at her death was less than forty years old, 
plump and strong and fair, with a face as unbroken 
as a girl's; and I could not bear it. It seemed as if I 
could never breathe again. I fell like one smitten 
with paralysis; and though I did not lose conscious- 
ness I lost all power of motion for a day and night, 
and was weeks in regaining it perfectly. 

My mother's death compelled me to change my 
plans somewhat. I would not relinquish my intention 
of teaching, but I could not get my consent to leave 
Emma in the house that I was leaving, she was so 
lovely and so willing to submit to any work that 
might be put upon her. I knew that if I should take 
her that a servant would be provided to do the work, 
for Lib had never been strong enough to do it. At 
the same time I was not afraid to leave the two little 
girls, who had now entered school and seemed much 
happier than before. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 239 

So I took my pretty sister and started on a long 
journey — made longer by being performed partly by 
stage, though principally by steamer; and we soon 
found ourselves back under the roof of my good 
friend, Mr. Dickens. We were only here a few days, 
when we went to Griggsville, where my school was 
ready to open. 

Mr. Dickens 1 family were as loving and hilarious as 
ever, and I was immediately inducted into the atmos- 
phere of nonsense that pervaded the group in spite of the 
ever present attempt to keep things down to the level 
of proper religious solemnity. Really religion was a 
farce in this family; there was too much human 
nature about them for this false thing to cover it up; 
they were too big for so flimsy a cloak, and too 
intrinsically good to be concealed by it. It was their 
native goodness which they mistook for religion. 

The next morning after we got there we had family 
prayers as usual. The morning had been chilly and 
a few sticks were burning in the old-fashioned fire 
place. The cat I had known so well in the previous 
years was occupying the choicest corner, big and fat 
and trifling, but a veritable aristocrat in spite of the 
fact that he looked as if he had been through a 
threshing machine, as a result of his dissipated life 



240 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

and his many combats. His ears had entirely de- 
parted; one eye was permanently half closed and he 
seemed to be winking at whomsoever he looked, 
sardonically and wickedly. The children got out of 
his way when he manifested an intention of occupy- 
ing their places, and he would take possession of the 
vacated seats as if they were his by inalienable right. 
What was more, he would not stand any nonsense 
from them. He seemed to know perfectly when they 
were making fun of him; and as to practical joking 
he had taught them that such a thing was not to be 
thought of in connection with his majesty. 

A right surly, ugly, defiant old autocrat he was; 
and more than once during prayers something had 
happened to roil his temper and put him in a quarrel- 
some mood. 

On this particular morning I think the small boys, 
Benny and Jim, were anxious to display his peculiar- 
ities to Emma, who was unacquainted with them. 
The little fellows were barefooted even though the 
morning was chilly. We were all kneeling down, 
and I was so placed that I could see what the boys 
were doing. Jim glanced behind him where the cat 
was lying on the hearth and moved his big toe — very 
gently at first — but not so gently that the cat failed 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 241 

to see it. He opened one eye a little wider and began 
to watch. Jim returned to his prayers, but presently 
moved his toe a trifle more aggressively. The cat — 
his name was Moses — became alert; he sat up and 
fastened one villainous eye on Jim's toe. Jim put his 
head down low on the chair as he continued his 
devotions. It was not possible to remain in this 
condition long, in ignorance of what was going on 
behind him, so he raised his arm and took a look at 
Moses from under that shelter. Moses knew now 
that an insult was brewing, for he met Jim's eye with 
a resolute look, and opened his mouth in a soundless 
but wicked mew. 

Instantly Jim became as one petrified, and remained 
in this state so long that Moses concluded he had 
been mistaken in the boy's intentions and was prepar- 
ing to lie down again, when once more Jim wiggled 
his toe violently, aggressively, tauntingly. Then 
Moses split the air with as wicked a yell as I ever 
heard; not a plain, go-ahead yell, but a complicated, 
purposeful yell that quavered up and down the gamut, 
challenging every person in the room to trot out his or 
her secret intentions towards him and walk up to a set- 
tlement. Every hair on his ugly body was on end as 
he lashed his tail — still continuing his caterwaul with 



242 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

increasing vengeance and an ever changing diversity 
of tone. 

Mr. Dickens suspended his praying and looked 
around. Every person in the room looked around 
except Jim, who prayed on with unexampled in- 
tentness. 

"Jarnes," said Mr. Dickens. 

u Did you speak to me, pa?" 

u Yes, I spoke to you; what have you been doing to 
Moses? 1 ' 

Why, pa, I ain't done nothin'; sure as you're born 
I ain't; I'll cross my heart I haven't touched him." 

"James, perhaps you think I am unacquainted with 
the characteristics of that cat; perhaps you think I 
am unaware of the fact that it is not necessary to 
touch him in order to arouse his temper. Whatever 
may have been the cause of this present outbreak, my 
son, and I am firmly convinced that you know what 
it is, I now warn you that it must not occur again 
during this present season of prayer, which we will 
now continue." 

Moses, who knew perfectly well that his rights 
were being defended, now lay down, but in a very 
wide-awake condition, and still growling in under- 
tones. Mr. Dickens prayed away to this accompani- 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 243 

merit; and I do not know that I ever heard anything 
funnier than the mumbled threats of Moses and the 
variety of tones he managed to express in a rather low, 
but distinct voice, as the exercises proceeded to a close. 

When we arose from our knees and became seated 
Moses got up also. Evidently he was afraid his 
temper would cool, and kept coaxing it along on 
imaginary insults. He watched Jim closely; Jim sat 
huddled up in a rocking chair with his feet under 
him. Mrs. Dickens announced breakfast, and we all 
started toward the dining room. No sooner had Jim's 
bare feet touched the floor than Moses sprang upon 
them like a tiger, his fur on end, his claws unsheathed 
as with frantic movements he tore away at the little 
fellow's unprotected flesh. Jim's nimbleness saved 
him from serious damage, but it was hours before 
Moses was sufficiently quieted to go to sleep on his 
favorite mat in the chimney corner; and although 
Jim denied the impeachment, it was a long time 
before he u winked his toe" at the old savage again. 

A few days later Emma and I were in Griggsville 
at u Pap Wageley's" hotel, where we remained a few 
days before we found a private boarding house to suit 
us; after which the school in which I was to teach 
opened, and I began my duties. 



244 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Oh, the stupidity of the situation! I did not want 
to teach, but it was teach or starve. And I was lone- 
some; I had been lonesome for such a long time. 
Emma was the only creature on earth who drew my 
heart out in affection. I hardly know what this con- 
dition meant. One thing certain, the cloud that was 
over me seemed very heavy and impenetrable. Re- 
ligion was not troubling me much. I was quite 
devout and had a feeling of satisfaction in my devo- 
tions. M} T salary was small, but enough to satisfy my 
wants. I had lost the desire for fine clothes for 
myself, but loved to see Emma dressed. It was the 
one spark of interest left in me — the pride I had in 
this young girl. She was so exquisitely beautiful 
that her presence created a sensation wherever she 
appeared. She began to make acqaintances; first of 
school girls of her own age, and soon after, of their 
brothers and friends. Of evenings she filled the 
parlors with her company. Mrs. Kneeland, our land- 
lady, was as much interested in Emma's visitors as 
Emma was, and assisted in entertaining them. 
Emma's contributions to social life consisted in being 
beautiful, and in laughing musically, and in listening 
with the sweetest and most genial interest to those 
who were willing to do the talking. Old and young 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 245 

worshiped her; and before our year in that place was 
out I firmly believe she had twenty offers of marriage 
from young men, middle-aged men, old men and boys. 

She was unwilling to go down into the parlors of 
an evening without me, and so I was often with her 
there, trying my best to add to her happiness in every 
way I could. I do not know why it did not occur to 
me to marry Emma to some one of her eligible 
suitors, and thus provide a home for her as well as my- 
self; but I did not seem to think of it, though I 
despised to have to earn my living by teaching, and 
it was the only thing I could do. I cannot recall 
what kind of ideas I had about marriage in those 
days. I am sure I had not gotten over the belief born 
in me that marriage was the only hope life held out to 
any woman; neither was I forgetful of the fact that 
time was slipping along with me, and that T was be- 
ginniug to be considered Emma's "old-maid" sister. I 
must have been between twenty-three and twenty-four. 

As the days went on, Emma and I seemed to 
become very popular. The best people in the place, 
young and old, visited us; invitations were showered 
upon us, and every available moment we could 
spare — I from my school duties and Emma from her 
studies — was filled with social pleasures. 



246 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

From the first evening I spent in helping "Em 1 ' 
entertain her "cubs," my attention had been arrested 
by a young medical student, of whom I often spoke 
to Mrs. Kneeland as the one I would rather see 
attached to Emma than any of the others. He had a 
fine pair of expressive dark eyes, and was otherwise 
attractive personally; but the thing which pleased me 
most was the quickness of his wit. Turning his 
gentle, but always brillianjb face toward one who was 
talking with him, he had power to apprehend every 
shade of thought that arose in the person's mind; and 
nothing could have been more charming than his 
responsiveness. Then, too, he had been a great 
student in his college and was master of the language. 
I never have known anyone who always used the 
right word in the right place with such unerring 
results as he did. And he was witty beyond any 
person I had seen then. How he did make me laugh, 
and how he enjoyed his power to do so! enjoyed it the 
more because so few had this power; for — as I have 
said — I was under a cloud at the time that deadened me 
all over except in my love for this sweet sister of mine. 

But I acknowledged the many attractions of this 
young man, and began to weave a romance for him 
and Emma. I was pleased to see him watch her as he 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 247 

was sitting by me, and to hear him laugh with her; 
for she had the kind of laugh that brings a re- 
sponsive laugh from others, whether there is anything 
to laugh at or not. He often spoke of her beauty; 
and on occasions when he had gone rather long with- 
out speaking of it, I would speak of it to him. 

Another season at the medical school, and he would 
graduate. Then his future was sure; at least, I 
thought so. He was undoubtedly intellectual, and 
his family connections were of the most desirable. 
What could hinder him from making Emma an ex- 
cellent husband, after he had become fully equipped 
for the practice of medicine? He was in his twenty- 
second year, two years younger than I was, and seven 
years older than Emma. 

When Emma and I were alone she talked to me of 
her friends, both boys and girls, and it seemed as if 
she was about equally interested in all of them; no 
more in love with this favorite of mine than with any 
of the others. I sometimes said to her, "Why, Emma, 
don't you see that Harry W'ashburn is the superior of 
the whole crowd? 1 ' To which she would give a cold, 
indifferent affirmative, or no answer at all. And so 
things slipped along; but never a day passed in which 
I failed to add something to the air castle I was build- 



248 A SEAKCH FOE FREEDOM. 

ing for Harry Washburn and Emma. Six months 
passed and I was still building. He was the darlingest, 
sweetest boy on earth; he was the only person in the 
world good enough and brilliant enough for my lovely 
little pet sister. But he did not declare himself. 

One night he called, and Emma was gone; everybody 
was gone. I felt his disappointment and told him so 
before I offered him a seat. He looked at me with a 
kind of impatient despair in his eyes; he waited a mo- 
ment and I could feel the gathering of resolution in 
him until the atmosphere vibrated with a force that 
was new to me. He crossed the room to the lounge. 

u Come here, Miss Wilmans," he said, "I want to 
see you, and I am glad that Emma is out. Now, tell 
me, if you please, whether or not you have a separate 
existence from that little sister of yours, or if you are 
simply the tail to her kite and expect to remain so all 
your life?" 

I answered truly that I had not the least idea what 
he was talking about. 

"There is no reason why you should not understand 
me; and my actions have been plain enough. There 
are none so blind as those who won't see." 

"But, Harry, I think I have seen all along. Now 
speak out; for nothing but words will clinch matters 
when they come to a climax." 



A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 249 

u Yes I will speak out. I love you, Miss Wilmans, 
and I never loved another girl in my life. I saw your 
sister first, and was drawn into her train by her 
wonderful beauty. I had spent several evenings 
with her before I met you. I tried to reason my- 
self into believing I was in love with her; I asked 
myself how it was possible not to be in love with her; 
but my self-questioning was knocked into the middle 
of next year the very first time [ saw you. When I 
went home from here that night 'I walked on 
thrones.' I had never known what life was before. 
I was alive for the first time. And what am I to 
think of the fact that you have never seen it, never 
even dreamed of what I was feeling? If affection 
like mine can exist and awaken no response, I want 
to know what you are made of? There is not a guest 
that frequents this house who does not know it. 
The very walls and furniture of these rooms are per- 
meated with the fact, and if an essence could be 
extracted from them, as it is extracted from roses, it 
would be pure attar of love." 

Oh! the glow of the boy's eyes; and the extrava- 
gance of his language as — driven by his impetuosity — 
he poured out the liquid fire of his young passion 
upon me. Yet, all the time, mingled with his con- 



250 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

fession — there ran a thread of reproach because I 
had not known; and in some insidious way he made 
me feel that in comparison with him I was nothing 
but a lump of putty. He did not mean to do this, 
but he did it. He sat there on the lounge quite apart 
from me; his attitude was calm,, but I could see that 
his muscles were vibrant with positiveness. The 
brilliancy of his dark eyes was gloomed over as if 
under a cloud, and the baleful gleams that broke 
through the shadows tore their way through my 
sympathies and pained me intensely. 

But there was more than sympathy in my feelings 
as I continued to listen. Slowly and by almost imper- 
ceptible degrees, the very atoms of my body became 
winged, and arose trembling beneath the force of his 
words. Yes, trembling and poised, ready to meet the 
touch of his lips, the clasp of his arms. 

But he did not know this. Filled with disappoint- 
ment because I had assigned him to Emma, he could 
not imagine the rapid transference in my mind from 
her to me, and he went away with his head bowed and 
with tears in his eyes; but with a step as firm and a 
manner as manly as ever; yes, more so; for that night 
was the first time I had particularly observed the self- 
poise of his beautiful body, and the splendid dignity 
of his carriage. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



"FEARFULLY IN LOVE. 

One cannot always be writing love scenes, and I 
suppose I ought to hasten on with this narrative and 
leave the readers to guess the outcome. They already 
know that I did not marry my boy lover; but they 
cannot know what an awakening of the emotional 
nature it was for me, nor how it literally tore my soul 
in pieces, and darkened my life for years after. 

The emotional nature is the torture chamber of the 
human organism. That is, it is the torture chamber 
to one who lives in it. It is an essential part of the 
human being; it is that part which generates warmth, 
passion, but it will not do for this part to dominate 
the intellect. Its true function is to furnish motive 
power — steam — for the intellect, but it is not the 
home of the intellect, nor the master of it, but its 
servant and slave. 

And yet we live in this part of ourselves when we 
are young, and it tortures us while it governs us; and, 
indeed, under the law of growth, every atom of it is 

251 



252 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

in conspiracy with every other atom to force us to 
move forward to the upper story of pure reason, and 
leave the steam-generating department to its legiti- 
mate business of furnishing force for the brain. 

It was several days before I saw Harry again. In 
the meantime I was in such a strain of anxiety that 
the action of my heart ran down below zero. Every 
thought I could generate flowed toward him, until I 
was in a condition of depletion bordering on collapse. 

The interpretation of the above paragraph is — that 
I was "fearfully" in love. I had given myself away 
completely. This is what being in love means to a 
person who has been through the experience and 
comes out of it with enough intelligence left to 
reason on the situation with any degree of correctness. 

Being in love is nothing less than the temporary 
abandonment of self; the merging of the self in 
another; and anything more distressing than it is 
while it lasts — taking into consideration its anxieties 
as they alternate with its hopes — I can get no con- 
ception of. The sudden transitions from heaven to 
hell, the rapidity of the ascents and descents, were too 
much for my patient endurance; and even while I 
was enslaved by the feeling, I resented its tyranny, 
though I did not or could not free myself from it. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 253 

I recognized even then that it was a condition which 
darkened, instead of illuminating the intelligence; a 
condition that rendered cool, calm, sensible judgment 
impossible — thus making marriage — the one institu- 
tion founded upon it — the most uncertain venture 
that men and women can undertake. 

Why, what is it but a fever of the blood, which 
burns itself out in time, leaving too often nothing but 
ashes? What is it but a mighty stimulant which, 
like other stimulants, first lifts to the seventh heaven 
of happiness, and then prostrates to the lowest depths 
in reaction? 

Nevertheless the belief in it is widespread as the 
race, and I hardly dare write my convictions concern- 
ing it. Nine-tenths of all the literature in the world 
are founded in a belief — not only of the power of this 
mighty emotion to rule mankind, but of its right to 
do so. Millions of unsophisticated souls are ready to 
shout a negation to every word I can say against it; 
though, indeed, I have nothing to say against it in it- 
self, since it is a part of the human organism that can- 
not be dispensed with; but I have much to say against 
the position assigned it as ruler in the affairs of life. 
It is a usurper. The intellect is, or should be, mas- 
ter, and the love nature should be subordinate to it. 



254 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Otherwise it runs away with us and makes fools of us. 
I do not expect to convince many persons of the 
folly of being governed by the emotions. The race is 
young yet, and it has not suffered enough to believe 
what I am saying; or rather, perhaps, the experiences 
derived from the emotions are too seductive in spite 
of their painfulness to cause people to investigate 
their true office in the human body and to subordinate 
them to their proper place. But I shall give some- 
thing of my own experience; and if there happens to 
be even a small number among my readers, who 
are able to take the hint and forever refuse to 
be enslaved by so brainless a thing as the emotion 
which is well described when spoken of as the con- 
dition of having "fallen in love," then I shall have 
done some good; while at the same time it need not 
destroy the faith of thousands of its victims who are 
not ready to break their allegiance to it. 

It is the truth that after four or five days of this 
life outflow towards Harry, I was not only weakened 
physically all over, but mentally also. I am sure of 
it, because the strong, self-poised expression of my 
face had degenerated into one of almost maudlin 
idiocy. What is there in life to compensate for such 
complete loss of the self as this? Does the owner- 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 255 

ship of another, as in marriage, do it? No, it does 
not; but this ownership kills it, and releases the brain 
to its normal action again; and this is the best thing 
l can say of marriage. It is the death of emotional love. 

Bat because I did not marry my boy lover, the 
cords of my affections reaching out to him were not 
broken for years and years after we had parted. 

It was on the fifth evening after he had declared 
his love for me, and I was constantly absorbed in the 
thought of another visit from him, when I heard the 
tinkle of a guitar beneath my window. I was leaning 
out of this window in the most lackadaisical attitude 
when the sound reached me. The night was as dark 
as pitch, and the weather was at its hottest. My room 
was dark also except for the faint glimmer of a small 
lamp in the adjoining hall. Presently he sang, and I 
recognized his voice. It was not a remarkable voice 
for singing, though its conversational tone was manly 
and strong; a deep, rich bass, whose power I had not 
known until I heard it break — for a moment only — into 
almost a sob that night in which he spoke of his love. 

It was Harry again after the lapse of ages — to me. 
It was light after almost interminable darkness. He 
sang that old song — new then: 

" Tis but an hour since first we met, 
Another and our barks may sever." 



256 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

The words were unwisely chosen and filled me 
with pain. If the crack of doom had rent the air it 
could not have startled my quivering heart more 
terribly. What an extravagant young fool I was! 
The idea of parting forever after having^ once met 
him was death. 

The song finished I think he moved away. My 
heart turned to palpable lead within my breast. My 
head fell on my arms as they rested on the casement. 
I must have been near fainting, for I did not hear him 
return; but I heard the guitar again, and then these 

words: 

"I know an eye so softly bright, 
That glistens like a star at night; 

My soul it draws with glances kind. 

To heaven's blue vault, and there I find 
Another star as pure and clear 
As that which mildly sparkles here. 

Beloved eye, beloved star, 

Thou art so near and yet so far. 
If closed at last that radiant eye should be, 
No more the day will dawn for me ; 

If night should dim its laughing light 

Oh ! then forever, ever 'twill be night. 
Those eyes that brightly, softly shine 
For me the sun and moon combine ! 

Beloved eye, beloved star, 

Thou art so near and yet so far." 

As this last song was proceeding, it came to me 
that I had not given him a word of encouragement 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 257 

on that last evening, though I had so longed to do it; 
and that he was really in a very hopeless state. This 
view of the matter toned me up to my normal con- 
dition, and made me decide that my best plan would 
be to strengthen his courage in pursuit of my 
affections. 

I found myself laughing; for with the thought of 
strengthening his courage, I caught sight, in imagina- 
tion, of little Em as I had seen her a week before, 
sitting on the piano stool and telling an anecdote that 
was meant to have some reference to me as I had 
appeared in a game of ball that day. 

It was about a woman who lived at Cape Cod, where 
the wind blows pretty much all the time, and where 
from the occupation of the people as fishermen, the 
children knew many nautical phrases and the correct 
way of applying them. 

This particular woman, who was very fat, Em 
assured us, "even fatter than Helen," had a son Bill 
that she was in the habit of correcting provided she 
could catch him. One day Bill had committed some 
outrage, and ran through the open door and down 
the beach for dear life, with his mother in full chase, 
and rapidly gaining on him under the favoring cir- 
cumstances of full sail and the wind behind her. 



258 A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 

Another urchin standing near, perceiving how the 
matter was going, roared out, "Try her on the wind, 
Bill." No sooner said than done. Bill swung his 
small craft around, and sailed into the very teeth of 
the gale, while his mother went to leeward like a log. 

Laughing quite like my old self, I leaned out of the 
window as the song ceased and said, 

u Harry, do you remember that anecdote Emma told 
the other evening?" 

"No, I don't." 

"I do. The gist of it was, 'Try her on the wind, 
Bill.'" 

There was a momentary silence, and then Harry 
spoke again manfully, peremptorily, yet with a laugh 
in his tones. 

"You come down here, Miss Wilmans, immediately 
if not sooner." 

"And you go to the parlors, Harry, and light up." 

And oh! what an evening that was. Emma was 
away and we two lovers were alone. I never forgot 
it; and years afterwards I found that the remembrance 
of it was as vivid with Harry as with me. 

It was the beginning of the most virulent mixture 
of heaven and hell that ever poisoned two lives. I 
really think that I never was happy when under the 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 259 

influence of this love, unless those moments of 
temporary release from some almost unbearable pain 
arising from it, could be called happiness. I never, 
except for a few hours at a time, rested on his 
assurance of love, but kept feeling that it was too 
good to be true, and that such blessedness could not 
possibly exist for me. 

This feeling destroyed the fun-loving spirit in me 
and made me sombre and melancholly. I was so 
changed that I am sure his admiration must have 
abated somewhat, and with this abatement he began 
to be attracted to other girls who were jollier than I 
was. With half the knowledge of human nature that 
I now have I could have kept him true as steel. I 
could have made myself irresistible by simply develop- 
ing myself in the direction of his taste. He wanted 
me to be brilliant and witty, and also to keep up with 
the literature of the time. It was this in me that had 
caught his fancy and captured his affections; and 
when I turned dull and sombre he was perplexed, at 
least, and probably disappointed, so that he began to 
look out for these same qualities in others. 

Yet all the time there was a tenderness about him 
that was for me alone. Years of devotion that 
followed stand in proof of what I have just written. 



260 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

He never got over his love for me while he lived. 
But during the months of which I am writing he did 
not understand me; he did not know how greatly I 
stood in fear of losing him; and it was in consequence 
of this fear that I did lose him finally. 

He was so attractive that almost every one sought 
him. He was so kind-hearted and generous and had 
such a faculty for knowing how to do everything that 
needed to be done. If a window shade in the parlor 
was refractory he fixed it; if the pictures were not 
arranged artistically he could not stand them, but 
hunted the stepladder, and such other things as were 
necessary, and made the change. 

Wherever he was he drew people to him. At the 
depot he was the centre point toward which all the 
perplexed female tribe gravitated with irresistible 
force. He bought their tickets, and explained the 
route, and had trunks checked, and made everything 
and everybody all right. His bright, handsome face 
was everywhere whenever help was needed. At 
the dances and picnics he was just as useful and as 
pleasant. 

He seemed to love everybody. I thought he loved 
some of them too much, and sulked about it. He did 
not know what ailed me when I was sulking, and 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 261 

fancied that my love was cooling and was repelled, 
and no doubt grieved. But his patience was inde- 
fatigable, and he bore all my moods with gentleness. 

I did not know him, and I did not know how to love 
rationally. Indeed, I did not know anything about 
the matter then, and I do not yet; only "good Lord, 
deliver me" from ever having another experience of 
the kind. My emotional nature was too strong to 
bear such a complete upsetment at a time when my in- 
tellect had not become strong enough to control it. 
And so I tore myself to pieces daily, and I know I 
must have brought more pain than pleasure to the 
gentle heart of my boy lover. 

I have been a great novel reader in my time; and 
never yet have I seen the passion of love portrayed 
more powerfully than I felt it, and never have I read 
such portrayal but the old feeling has come back to 
tear at my heart with the same irresistible force. 

This talk of the "heights of ecstasy" connected with 
this passion may be true for others, but I must con- 
fess I never was there, and the sentence does not "pal- 
pitate with actuality" for me. Like Huck Finn, when 
he read "Pilgrim's Progress," the descriptions of the 
thing "are interestin' but tough," and no experience 
of mine can corroborate them. 



262 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Falling in love seems to be a falling down below 
the ordinary action of the every -day brain. It is a 
surrendery of the brain to a power which should be 
held in abeyance; and in this way it is a reversal of 
the position that has made man — in thp process of 
evolution — an upright creature. At least, this is my 
belief to-day; but I reserve the privilege of changing 
my opinion on the subject if ever more light comes; 
that is, if I ever u fall in love" again. Here is a chance 
for that irrepressible "small fry" up in Boston to 
laugh. The idea of grandmamma's falling in love! 

There were times when I harbored the thought of 
breaking with Harry, out of my intense longing for 
freedom; but I could not do it. And the year wore on 
and the time came for us both to leave; I for my 
brother's home in Cedar Rapids, and he for his last 
term in the Chicago medical school; and so we parted. 

I seem to be psychologized by this recital. I am 
taken back through the pain of the whole thing once 
more. My heart feels like lead in my breast, and my 
hand is too nerveless to write. 

There happened to be some new ideas in medical 
matters coming to the front at that time, and Gus be- 
ing a progressive man wanted to go to Chicago for a 
brief season of study, and there he met Harry. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 263 

I do not know how Gus could keep from loving 
Harry, but he did not love him, though Harry was 
more than kind to him, and tried in every way to win 
his favor. It is true that Harry went into society that 
he should have avoided, and that he was often under 
the influence of drink; but I believe that Gus could 
have kept him straight if he had tried. As it was, 
Gus became more and more angry to think of my 
marrying him, and treated Ijim shamefully at last. 
How I was included in the breach I cannot recall, but 
it is certain that I was included, and that our letters 
grew cold, especially his, until at last it was all over. 

I will not attempt to describe in detail how I felt; 
but it is an actual fact that the light of the whole 
world went out for me, and only began to come back 
when my first baby was laid in my arms some two 
years later. 

One evening, about three months after my break 
with Harry, as I sat in the parlor alone, it being late 
and the family in bed, there came a ring at the door. 
As Gus had calls all times of the night I thought 
nothing of it, as I answered the bell. I opened the 
parlor door into the hall and stepped to the hall door. 
In opening the hall door the parlor door swung shut, 
leaving me in black darkness; but the person outside 



264 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

had caught a momentary glimpse of me before the 
light was shut off. I could not see even the faintest 
outlines of him, but he spoke my name, "Helen," and 
I knew his voice. 

u Dr. Baker, 1 ' I said, and the next moment the big, 
strong fellow had me in his arms. 

We went into the lighted parlor and looked at each 
other. Seven years had passed and he was trenching 
on middle age, but he showed no sign of it. He was 
splendidly dressed, and was a splendid looking man. 
I knew even before he spoke that he intended to marry 
me, and I knew that I was too heart-broken and too 
weak, both physically and mentally, to resist. 

Nevertheless I did resist to the extent of telling him 
all I had gone through, and how I still felt towards 
Harry. But he set it aside so persistently and with 
■such firmness that at length I yielded, and with Gus's 
approval we were married. 

Lib was married several months before I was. After 
my marriage it was decided that Emma should be put 
in a boarding school; that Lib should keep Julia, and 
that I was to take little Clem with me to California, 
where we went in a few months. 

After our marriage we went back to Fairfield, where 
we spent a month with old friends before saying "good- 
bye" to them — in very many instances — forever. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 265 

There was no railroad to California then, and the 
steamship line had been completed but a short time. 
It was late in the spring of 1856 that we left New 
York for San Francisco. We had a storm on the 
Pacific and a dense fog that protracted our journey so 
that we were nearly four weeks on the way. 

Four weeks is not a very long time even in connec- 
tion with a sea voyage; but it was long enough to 
prove to me that I had made the biggest mistake of 
my life in my marriage. 



CHAPTER XV. 



A BROKEN" IDOL. 

I have not one word to say against my husband, 
who in many ways was a grand character. He was a 
man of rare integrity, and commanded the respect of 
other men to a very marked degree. But he was a 
most unhappy disposition, and looked on the dark side 
of life every day, and all the time, to the utter ex- 
clusion of the bright side. I think he was the most 
wretched and self-tormenting man I ever knew. 

He took the chance of winning my affection when 

he married me, and he might have done it had he 

known how. But he began to doubt his ability to do 

so, and to doubt my fealty to him almost immediately 

and without the slightest cause. He Could not bear 

to have me make any acquaintances on the ship; he 

made no effort to entertain me himself, but was cross 

with me because others did. We had lovely weather 

the first part of our voyage. The sea was like a mirror 

and the deck of our vessel was as level as a ball room 

floor. There was a fine band aboard, and we danced 

2©e 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 267 

not only in the evenings, but often in the day time 
also. This dancing was one prolonged aggravation to 
the doctor. 

I was a member of a church that forbade dancing, 
and yet I had broken over on more than one occasion. 
It was so easy for the music to get into my heels that 
the temptation was irresistible. 

After an unusually long voyage, owing to a storm 
that came on after we crossed the Isthmus, we got 
into San Francisco early in June 1856. Here we 
remained but a day or two, and then went to Suisun 
Valley where my husband's farm was located. This 
is one of the richest valleys in the whole state, the 
soil being particularly deep, and productive beyond 
belief. 

All my life I had despised a farm. The sounds on a 
farm, so pleasing to many, were lonesome and un- 
musical and sickening to me. The lowing of cattle, 
the crowing of chickens, the conversation of the ducks 
and geese — which I really did like when I came to 
understand their language — were all mere jargon to 
me then, and added to the inharmony which reigned 
within me. 

The farmhouse was a miserable structure scarcely 
fit for a cow shed. There were no conveniences of 



268 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

any kind in it, and no attractions outside of it. The 
valley itself was simply a flat, unbroken plain with 
here and there a stunted oak tree. These trees were 
all leaning in one direction, showing the effect of the 
trade winds, which blew for six months out of the 
year in an almost unbroken gale. The sky was gray 
in summer with fog from the bay; the entire aspect 
was the acme of gloom. Out on the road — if one 
ventured out — the dust caused by the long dry season 
was swept in clouds either with or against you, so 
that it mattered not whether your clothes were soiled 
or clean when you left home. 

This was the summer of that most wearisome 
climate. The winter was better. There was scarcely 
ever the slightest touch of frost. The trade winds 
ceased, and the gray went out of the sky, leaving it 
beautifully blue, except when the rains came. The 
rains, too, were a real delight. They were so needed; 
every growing thing was so covered with dust; and the 
cracked earth drank the descending waters greedily. 

In the winter the plowing was done and the wheat 
planted. It was mostly wheat that we raised. 

Our farm was large, and my husband was considered 
a rich man. He had about quit the practice of 
medicine and gave his entire time to his crops. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 269 

I must have been an extremely reticent girl not to 
have told him of my disinclination to fill the position 
he assigned me; a position of such slavery as would 
scarcely be thought possible for any woman to fill. 

It took nine or ten men in the winter to get the 
crop in. It took from twenty to twenty-five to take 
it off; and the crops were so heavy that it frequently 
required three months to harvest them. This was 
before farming machinery had made the improve- 
ments in farmers' work that it has since done. 

I did the cooking and the housework for this crowd 
of men, and my washing and ironing and sewing 
besides. I was up before day, and was rarely in bed 
before midnight. I had a few neighbors who worked 
as hard as I did in proportion to their strength, 
though none of them were half so strong as I was. 

I think it took nearly two years to toughen me to 
the work. During this time I had wept in secret over 
my lonely and truly dreadful position until my eyes 
quite failed me and I was compelled to put on glasses. 

But just before I got the glasses my baby came, 
and I was no longer alone. 

It is true that my little sister Clem was with me 
during this time, .but I had kept her in school; and 
even when she was at home I was resolved not to 



270 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

have her enslaved by the uncongenial work that was 
fast destroying the beauty of my hands and com- 
plexion, and that was already beginning to stiffen my 
joints somewhat. 

But this baby — Ada! If I do some crowing over 
her I freely give every other mother the same privi- 
lege. I never saw such a baby as she was. I have 
never seen any other baby so precocious. Her intel- 
ligence seems marvelous now as I look back and see 
what she did, and later what she said, and how she 
performed generally. Such a madcap laugh as she 
had, and such appreciation of fun! The little scamp 
played a practical joke on me before she was six 
months old. I had nursed her to sleep (as I supposed) 
and had placed her in her crib and started out to 
wash the supper dishes. Hearing a joyous little 
squeal and a rapturous, ringing laugh behind me, I 
turned, and there she stood on her tiny feet holding 
by the railing, rippling all over with mirth, while 
her eyes said unmistakably that she had played a trick 
on me. 

And yet, not thinking it possible that a baby of 
her age could get off a practical joke, I nursed her to 
sleep again. It only took about a minute this time, 
and I placed her in the crib and started out, to be 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 271 

once more arrested by that musical peal which said 
as plainly as spoken words, "I've fooled you again." 

I now began to experiment with her, and she kept 
repeating the performance until at last she was over- 
powered by sleep. 

Shortly after this she began to talk, and when she 
was eleven months old she put sentences together 
admirably. 

The farm hands, many of whom were men of 
sterling worth and culture, and had been leading 
citizens before they became stranded in a new country 
so far from home, were very fond of her ; and took 
almost the exclusive care of her when they were about 
the house. 

Babies were at a premium then in California, there 
being but few families there. I recall the time I 
went to a camp meeting when she was some eighi or 
ten months old. I could scarcely keep track of her. 
The men had her and were passing her around. 
They all wanted her, and in a little bashful, co- 
quettish way she wanted them. Evidently she ap- 
preciated their admiration. She would be brought 
back to me at intervals with her little fat paws full 
of gold nuggets and gold coins that they gave her. 

She learned to read almost as soon as she could 



272 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

talk. The men taught her the letters from news- 
papers at nights and on Sundays; and it was the 
richest thing I ever saw to witness her attempts at 
spelling and pronouncing the difficult words. They 
said she had "the grit to buck at anything;" and they 
taxed their ingenuity to find words long enough and 
hard enough. With her brilliant, laughing eyes she 
would watch them for each fresh word, and start into 
it with a rush of letters and a jumble of syllables that 
usually culminated in a vortex wherein the word 
itself was frequently overwhelmed, or only a faint 
semblance of it escaped; and the effort would be 
followed by her little, wild, reckless laugh, with such a 
ring of high vitality, that we were drawn into it 
irresistibly. Such fun as we had with the bright 
thing! 

When she was three years old the men were in the 
habit of setting her on a large table of an evening 
while she read the newspapers aloud to them. I 
scarcely owned the child at all. 

Those were primitive times in California. It was 
nothing to ride ten miles to a dance, and take her 
aloug. Indeed, before she was two years old she had 
a baby sister who was with her in all her excursions. 

Riding up to the school house — we usually held our 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 273 

dances in the school houses sparsely scattered over 
the country — it not unfreqnently chanced that 
twenty or thirty of the neighbors would be there to 
help us to dismount. My husband did not like to 
have me go to these dances, and often refused to 
accompany me. But there were always plenty of 
others who were willing to take care of us, and I would 
not be altogether restrained. Nearly all the women 
in a radius of fifteen miles would be there with their 
children. Beds were extemporized for the little ones 
out of saddle blankets and shawls, and the surplus 
men who could not dance took care of them when 
they needed care. Babies were passed around from 
one person to another, and no person seemed to feel 
them a burden. As for my volatile little tow-head 
she scarcely slept at all, but threw herself into the 
music and let the music dance her baby feet the 
whole night long. "And we didn't go home till 
morning." 

But on the tiresome ride home 1 had time for 
reflection. I expected to meet scowls, and they never 
failed me. Always before going to one of these 
dances I would make such perfect preparations for 
breakfast that there was scarcely anything to do 
besides steeping the coffee, and some of the men were 



274 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

always willing to do this for me. So that my going 
did not upset my household work. But that I would 
go at all vexed my husband, and he had very little 
consideration as to the way he manifested his feelings. 
He had his views of a wife's duties, andthey would 
have enslaved me completely if I had complied with 
them perfectly. I did comply with them entirely too 
much. I worked too hard. It would scarcely be 
believed that one woman could do the work that I 
did. In the twenty years I lived with him, less than 
two years would cover the time I had any household 
help. I showed him my swollen and stiffened joints, 
and told him I could not stand it to work so hard. 
But he only kept promising that when he got out of 
debt I should have help all the time. I knew quite 
well that if he had had my work to do, or a similar 
amount of work of another kind, that he would have 
hired two or more men to do it without reference to 
getting out of debt. But I had not sufficient positive- 
ness to assert myself, and so I bore it; not without 
complaining and making things quite lively for short 
intervals, however. 

If I had been brought up with any other idea than 
that of man's God-given right to lord it over woman, 
I could have changed the whole tenor of my life and 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 275 

of his also. Knowing him as well as I did later, I am 
sure I could have taken the management of the 
business in my own hands, and with small opposition 
on his part. I think, too, I could have made a success 
of it. One thing certain, it would not have been 
possible to botch it worse than it was botched. 

It was his complete lack of business ability that 
kept him in hot water. He should never have 
abandoned his profession for farming. In his pro- 
fession he was at the head, and he passed for his full 
worth. Sixteen dollars a visit was a doctor's regular 
price for attendance on patients. Up to the time he 
bought the farm he had a large practice. He was 
known and trusted all over that part of the state. 

A practicing physician's duties are hard, and he 
was tired of them. So he bought land. After his 
first purchase of two hundred acres of the richest 
land I ever saw, he began to want more. He wanted 
all the land that bordered on his land. In short, he 
wanted the world. He kept purchasing until he had 
invested all his money, and still he kept purchasing. 

Interest on money in California at that time was 
three per cent, a month. Land did not go up as 
rapidly as he expected. It did not go up at all. The 
crops were large, but prices varied so that no one 



276 A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 

knew when to sell. The doctor never was satisfied 
with a fair paying price, but usually held his grain 
until the market had touched the highest point and 
tumbled over the edge down and down toward 
nothingness. 

No wonder he was filled with anxiety, and that he 
did not understand how I could canter off ten miles to 
a dance with a baby in my lap, and another one in the 
lap of one of the neighbors. He thought me in- 
different to his troubles. He did not know that the 
gloom of his face had become a perpetual terror to 
me, and that my heart quailed whenever I heard his 
step on the porch. 

His entire attitude repelled me. He was not only 
unhappy, but he was irritable. He did not mean to 
be unkind, and he was not really so; but he often 
said things inadvertently that made me cry for hours. 
His indifference to the fact of my working so hard 
was a growing hurt, and I came in time to almost 
hate him for it. 

I could not forget that I had once been loved; and 
the recollection of Harry Washburn was with me 
almost hourly. I discovered later that it was not 
Harry to whom I was true, but an ideal that Harry 
failed utterly to fill. I had not stood in the same 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 277 

mental tracks all these years; I had been growing; 
and I had outgrown Harry, but I did not know it until 
after I met him again and saw him as he really was. 

My two young daughters were growing towards 
womanhood, and where I lived there were no educa- 
tional advantages. I should have said before this 
that the interest the doctor was paying on money 
had compelled him to sell his land where we had been 
living. Only a few thousand dollars were left us; 
and with this sum we went to the mountains of Lake 
county, a wild and beautiful spot, and there began to 
raise stock. Oar family consisted of the two 
daughters I have spoken of, and one son, Claude, and 
baby Jenny; the most angelic little girl I ever saw. 
She only lived to be nine years old, but she left a void 
never to be filled. 

I could not rest and feel that Ada and Florence 
were growing up without the advantages of a 
thorough education, and so I resolved to take them to 
San Francisco and put them into a good school. This 
determination of mine met with much resistance from 
the doctor, but I would not be overruled. The matter 
was too important. I had sacrificed everything to his 
belief in the power of poverty — even my health and 
strength, and such measure of beauty as I had pos- 



278 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

sessed; but I would go no farther. So I had my way. 

I firmly believed that if I had the time for writing 
I could earn enough for the family support. My ex- 
periences in this attempt will be recorded in another 
chapter. I reached San Francisco all right; and no 
bird freed from its cage ever. felt such an upliftment 
as I did. I met my old friends, the Daltons, here, and 
they assisted me in finding a suitable house and in be- 
coming settled. 

I knew that Harry was in San Francisco, because it 
had been announced in the papers several years be- 
fore. He had become a distinguished man, and was 
high up in a literary position which his own ability — 
such as it was — had established for him. 

I had made no effort to find him, and secretly 
dreaded a meeting with him. I know of nothing 
more distressing than the constant crushing which 
goes on among the hard-working farmers' wives, 
whereby they come to habitually distrust themselves, 
until they fear to face any but their commonest 
acquaintances. 

Such an intense timidity was on me all the time 
that Lam sure I would have gone on secretly dream- 
ing of Harry to the end of my days, without ever 
giving him a sign of my presence, had not fate or 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 279 

accident or the law of attraction ordered otherwise. 
I was on Kearney street one day with Jenny. She 
was about four years old; and I recall how beautiful 
she looked as she ran ahead of me with her fluffy curls 
trying to keep up with her, and in their grace and 
lightness only settling on her fair shoulders a moment 
at a time, then rising again to be borne on the air 
behind her — Oh, my baby ! 

The day was delicious and I felt as joyous as a girl. 
It seemed as if I might let Harry know of my presence 
in the city, and give him a chance to see me if he 
wished to. I felt quite sure that he would not want 
to see me; but the rest I had by this time taken from 
hard work, with the addition of a few fashionable 
garments, had greatly added to my self-possession, so 
that I was less timid than formerly. 

Absorbed in a delightfully hopeful revery, and 
watching Jenny with loving eyes, I scarcely noticed a 
man who passed me rapidly, and turned and passed 
me again. I caught his eye in full as we met face to 
face; I knew it was Harry, almost unchanged and 
handsomer than ever. But I gave him no look of 
recognition, for I think I had turned to stone, and he 
passed behind me once more. Then he repeated the 
same performance; but in the hasty flash of his dis- 



280 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

appearance I made up my mind that I would not 
recognize him. All my pride cauie in a rush. I was 
so changed, while in him the change was for the 
better. Heavens, how this matter chilled me! It re- 
moved me from the warm atmosphere iu s which my 
thoughts had been dwelling, and sent me to some 
■North-pole mental condition where I was frozen to 
death, bub still conscious of my own womanly dignity 
and worth. 

But he was not to be resisted. On coming again 
face to face with me he grasped my hands in unmis- 
takable welcome. Then Jenny who was the most 
friendly little thing that ever was, perceiving her 
mother's new acquaintance, caught him around the 
knees and with her upturned, smiling face danced a 
little welcome on his toes and the adjoining pavement. 

He looked down and then laughed his old genial, 
happy laugh. "It's your baby, Helen, 11 he said, and 
caught her up and kissed her rapturously. And then 
he began to talk. 

"I have no children, though I have wished for them 
much. My sisters have enough, and in each family 
there is a Helen because I desired it. I have perpetu- 
ated your name right and left, even if 1 have no little 
Helen of mv own. 11 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 281 

He told me among other things that he would have 
known me in China; that I was not greatly changed, 
etc. 

But to end this matter and this chapter. I will only 
add that I exchanged visits frequently with him and 
his lovely wife; that before I had been with them 
much, I liked her better than I did him. For it is a 
fact that he had made no advancement in his ideas at 
all, and was one of the most conservative men alive; 
weakly so; conservative to a degree that made him 
appear intrinsically unmanly. His success in life had 
sprung greatly from this fact. His fine literary edu- 
cation, together with his rare command of language, 
had made him a mouth piece through the public 
prints for the aristocratic element of the city; and his 
sentiments bore hard upon my own awakening ideas 
of justice as administered there and then. 

It did not take me long to find out that I had not 
been Loving Harry all these years, but like a vast 
number of married women and men too, whose mar- 
riages have proven fearfully uncongenial, I had simply 
been holding an ideal of what might have been. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE FETTERS ARE FALLING. 

After about two years in San Francisco, much of 
which time Dr. Baker spent with me quite pleasantly, 
I returned to the ranch. A little later Harry died. 
A letter from his wife gave me all the particulars. 
She was quite heart-broken; but the event did not 
bring a tear from me. He had gone out of my life 
before this as completely as if I had never known 
him. 

As before mentioned, the reason of this lay in the 
fact that I had been growing mentally, while he had 
not. I had passed above and beyond the habitual 
range of his ideas. The hard lessons of my life had 
been educating me, while he — lacking such teachers — 
missed the education. 

I had thought myself out of the church; out of all 
belief in a personal God; out of the Bible account of 
creation into the evolutionary theory; and I was in- 
vestigating every idea that promised to lead in the 
direction of truth. The very moment we touched 

282 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 283 

upon any of these subjects we clashed; and presently 
there was nothing for us to talk about, and his 
presence would tire me. 

It was not a matter of surprise to me that he 
succeeded in literature where I had failed. He was 
able to give the reading public the kind of pap it 
demanded; the food I tried to cram down its throat 
was too strong for it, and was rejected by it. Then, 
too, it was immensely in his favor that he was a 
practiced writer and a master of composition. I had 
ideas without any adequate medium of expression. 
He had no ideas, and wrote brilliant and beautiful 
nothings that had a tendency to please the average 
reader without antagonizing him, and also without 
arousing a thought. He was just the man for his 
position, and drew his princely salary from the largest 
moneyed corporation on the Pacific coast. He was a 
stool pidgeon in the hands of a conscienceless gang of 
millionaires, who, through the newspapers they had 
subsidized, sought to amuse the public while they 
robbed it. 

And he could do this under the benignant smile of 
the God he worshiped, and rail at me for having 
departed from his infantile religious beliefs. No 
wonder he became tiresome. 



284 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

And now I will go back awhile and tell how I got 
out of the religious beliefs I was born into. 

And I say boldly aud in defiance of all Christendom 
that the combined ills which prey upon the race and 
hold it in the slavery of ignorance are as nothing in 
comparison with its religious beliefs. Religion is the 
foundation rock on which rests every trouble and 
sorrow that besets humanity. It is organized in the 
belief of man's inherent weakness; it fosters his 
belief in his own nothingness; its entire tendency is 
to develop things and not men. 

Religion has not one solitary particle of true logic 
on which to rest. It was born of ignorance, bolstered 
by superstition, fed by that bugaboo of the ages, 
"authority." 

And an utterly baseless authority at that; an 
authority that cannot rise higher than the under- 
standing of man, or it would lose its connection with 
him, and fail to be available even for purposes of self- 
delusion. 

Religion was born at a time when the understand- 
ing of man was scarcely higher than that of the apes. 
It fastened itself upon the ignorant wonder of his 
questioning faculties and took possession of them. 

That religion has been an essential incident in 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 285 

race growth I am not going to deny. That it was a 
necessity of race growth to go through the stultifying 
process in order that it might learn the true way from 
the false, T shall not deny. Truth always— in our 
development — presents its negative pole to us first; 
that is, it shows us first what is not true, and from 
this point of observation we gradually feel our way 
toward what is true. 

Thus, religion that endeavors to teach man his 
weakness, leads him through experiences that would 
ruin him if they did not direct him to the very reverse 
of what they teach, and finally show him his strength. 

The very moment a man begins to live from a con- 
sciousness of his own strength he sees small use of a 
personal God; his reasoning powers awake, and little 
by little he reverses the entire scheme and comes out 
on top. Inasmuch as he had been a slave under his 
belief in the supremacy of a personal God, he sees 
himself the governing power and the creative force of 
the world, with the Principle of Being at his service 
\and under his command. And oh! what a change 
this is. 

The religious superstition hung heavily upon my 
mind and heart always. Even in my happiest hours 
I felt it an ever present weight below the surface of 



286 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

my gayetj. I was never quite free from it. But it 
was only when that fair, little, downy-ball of intense 
vitality — my baby — came to my arms that I began to 
be actively wretched about the doctrines of my church. 
It was then that the horrors of future punishment 
fastened cruel tentacles in my very flesh and made me 
wild with anxiety. I had borne these thoughts so far 
as I myself was concerned with some degree of forti- 
tude. For, indeed, it seemed that my own salvation 
rested with myself to a certain degree. Except in the 
matter of dancing I was faithful in all religious 
observances. I attended church regularly and rev- 
erently. I gave money for the support of the gospel 
with a liberal hand. I saved it up in every way I 
could; I took it from my housekeeping expenses, and 
from the sale of my poultry; and denied myself almost 
everything in order to do it. I kept open house for 
all the preachers in that part of the country, and was 
imposed upon to an almost unlimited extent by them. 
It will be wondered what my husband was thinking 
about during this time. I must confess that he was 
acting the perfect gentleman. He was humoring me 
in my beliefs. Never in all his life had he been for 
one moment under the influence of any religious 
opinions. Still he considered it no part of his rierh* 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 287 

to interfere with me in this matter. He was a man — 
who having formed his own opinion of right and 
wrong — could hold to his conclusion rigidly. 

He sometimes asked me questions about certain 
hopelessly unreasonable tenets held by my religion, 
and smiled cynically at my answers; but beyond this 
he let me alone. He usually went with me to church, 
and frequently returned in a very bad temper. Still 
on the whole I am sure he behaved much better than 
I would have done had our positions been reversed. 

What in the world is sweeter than a baby girl ex- 
cept two baby girls? When Ada was four years old 
and Florence a trifle over half that, they were the 
same size, and were taken for twins. They were in 
the habit of trudging about holding each other by the 
hand, and talking together in one unbroken stream of 
talk, interspersed with such ripples and cascades of 
laughter as I had never heard before. 

What wonder that the thought of their salvation 
from sin, and their eternal happiness was forced upon 
me? I saw that my own salvation would not save 
them, and that according to the tenets of my church 
I might come to the place of eternal parting with 
them. This thought was not so unbearable as it 
would have been but for one much worse; the thought 



288 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

that they might be everlastingly lost; everlastingly 
subject to the tortures of an orthodox hell. 

The horror of this kind of thinking grew on me 
and tortured me constantly. It robbed me of all 
pleasure in my children. I could better have borne to 
see them dead in their innocence, than to have them 
grow up with the certainty of bell before them, as the 
reward of sins so easily committed as they appeared 
to be. 

I began to talk to the preachers who frequented 
our house, but failed to arouse any special interest in 
them. This surprised me at first, for I had foolishly 
imagined that they carried these infinitely important 
matters upon their brains and consciences every wak- 
ing hour of their lives. It had seemed to me that 
their only mission was to u snatch souls as brands 
from the burning," and I was entirely unprepared for 
their indifference. I myself, infused by a conception 
of the awfulness of the situation, had become a tre- 
mendous evangelist in a limited, home-like way. I 
talked to the hired men with such earnestness and 
interest that I made converts of them in spite of the 
superior reasoning powers of many of them. I expect 
I frightened them. At all events I made church 
members of some of them. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 289 

- I talked to everybody who would listen. I must 
have been an intolerable nuisance to the neighbors, 
many of whom did really begin to avoid the house. 

And at length the preachers began to avoid me too. 
I "out-Heroded Herod' 1 to such an extent that they 
could not stand me. I reproached them for their 
"lukewarmness;" I "whacked" them over the head with 
whole bundles of quotations from the Bible; and 
frequently I became personally offensive, and called 
them names, such as backslider, hypocrite, etc. 

"How can the salvation, of these babies be insured; 
answer me that. 1 ' This was the burden of my question 
and my demand. Not that it was my own babies 
alone that agitated me. The whole race of babies and 
their parents included had become my own babies 
since my induction into motherhood. 

"Oh, you cold-blooded sneaks, sailing under the garb 
of Christ, and satisfied to eat and sleep and wear fine 
clothes and do nothing, when nine-tenths of the 
people are on the down grade, slanting directly into 
the yawning mouth of hell! What do you think you 
are for anyhow? 1 ' 

This is the question I put to four of the preachers, 
including the Elder, one Sunday afternoon when they 
were strutting about the floor, smoking cigars and 
discussing church gossip. The Elder turned on me. 



290 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

"Sister," he said "into what condition are you drift- 
ing? How can you justify yourself in saying such 
things as you have been saying? The habit of insult- 
ing God's chosen servants has been growing on you 
of late, so that you are becoming a torment to us 
instead of the blessing you once were. Kneel down 
right here and let us pray for you." 

Pray for me indeed! No words were ever spoken 
that let so much light into my mind on the subject of 
prayer. I thought of how my life had been one 
almost unbroken prayer, and how never a petition had 
been answered. Strange that I had not considered 
this fact before; but I never had. I saw it now plain 
enough. 

"You shall not pray for me," I said; "you shall tell 
me how my children are to be saved from hell." 

"Sister," replied the Elder, "be patient; have faith; 
make your own calling and election sure, and leave the 
fate of your children in the hands of God. I fully 
believe that God will save the children of such a 
mother as you are." 

"Bat will all be saved? I want to know this." 

"No, surely not," he answered. "Those who do not 
accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and believe it and 
live it will be damned." 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 291 

•'Suppose their brains are so constructed that they 
can't believe it?" 

"Yet-surely, sister, they must be damned; otherwise 
the words of the gospel are null and void." 

"Get out of this house, " I said. My voice was so 
low I only just heard it myself; yet every one in the 
room heard it distinctly. The doctor had been tilted 
back against the wall in a splint-bottomed chair, and 
his hat lay on the floor beside him. He reached down 
and, picking it up, placed it on his head at an angle 
that quite concealed his face. Otherwise he was per- 
fectly still. All the preachers looked at me aghast 
and speechless. Not one of them moved. 

Their hats and canes and umbrellas lay around pro- 
miscuously. My muscles quivered like the finest steel 
springs, so permeated were they with my thought as 
I picked up each separate article and pitched it out of 
doors. I might have been a butterfly poised in mid 
aid, or touching first one flower and then another, I 
felt so light and so superbly reckless. It was in this 
act that I laid down the burden of a life time, though 
at the moment I did not know it. 

The preachers huddled out in confusion; the doctor 
brought the front legs of his chair to the floor and 
walked leisurely out. He assisted them in picking up 



292 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

their scattered property, and walked down the road 
with them. It was two hours before he returned, and 
in that time I had passed through a revolution. 

T sat down in expectation of being overwhelmed 
with regret. I waited for it. It did not come. I had 
not dared investigate my feelings, but when at length 
I turned my thoughts inward I felt the strangest jubi- 
lation I ever experienced. The load of a life time was 
gone. What did it mean?" I could no longer keep 
my seat. I stood up and felt no weight. It came to 
me that I was suddenly translated. I walked to the 
door to meet the same dismal and forlorn view that 
had shocked my sense of beauty so often; yet there 
was no denying the fact that I seemed to be walking 
on air. My load was gone, and this that I was ex- 
periencing was the first effects of freedom. 

I thought of the two little girls taking their after- 
noon sleep in the next room. I had always been told 
that if I committed any unpardonable sin the first 
effect would show itself in the death of my mother 
love. Bat oh! what a rush of affection overwhelmed 
me as I looked at them. I would have waked them 
with my caresses, but was held back by my desire to 
think out the strangeness of the whole occurrence. 

But how long it was before emotion gave place to 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 293 

the power of thought! Indeed, it did not do so for 
days. For days I was filled with nothing but the 
jubilant sense of freedom. I quit trying to think, 
and felt that I could wait; and I had the assurance 
that thought — when it should come — would justify 
me. 

I hardly know how long it was before the whole 
truth of the matter unraveled itself to my compre- 
hension. But when it finally did so I knew that I — 
my own individualized intelligence — had never be- 
lieved one word of the whole gospel scheme. I knew 
that my entire belief in it had been hypnotic. It was 
the world's belief sweeping over me and through me, 
dimming and blinding my own reasoning powers. Lit- 
tle by little my reasoning powers crept out from under 
this deadening influence and asserted themselves, and 
I began to be a thinking creature with vested rights 
of my own. I was born into a new world. Like the 
young plant I had burst the soil that lay so heavily 
above my head, and had come through into the realm 
of light above. 

I had heard it said that when a repentant sinner 
u got religion'' he knew it by the expansion of his love 
nature; that it would induct him into a feeling of love 
for everybody. Whether this is so or not I cannot 



294 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

say; but I am sure that when I got rid of my religion 
I came into this feeling with great force. I loved 
every living soul; even the animals and plants came 
in for a large share. I was so happy [ can hardly 
convey an idea of it. 

It is surprising how little we know of our neighbors 
until a change of position brings us into new relations 
with them. On the farm south of us there was a man 
who seemed to live particularly secluded; and the 
same may be said of his entire family. Nobody knew 
what the religious sentiments of the family were, and 
nobody seemed to care. They were straight-forward, 
honest people and gave no one any trouble. 

The news of my unexampled treatment of the 
preachers traversed the neighborhood like wildfire, 
and reached this person, whose name was John Berber. 
The school master— a man of great learning — had 
boarded with Mr. Berber for years. No one knew any 
more of the schoolmaster's religion than of Mr. 
Berber's. But in less than a week after my escapade 
these two gentlemen came to see me. They were 
both perfectly independent in their religious views, 
and held very broad opinions on many subjects. They 
were deeply versed in the sciences, and were in every 
way unusually wise men, as well as genial, just and 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 295 

humorous. They gave me Paine's "Age of Reason 11 
to read; and the unshakable arguments of that splen- 
did book never left my mind. 

But it was not in me to stand still, content with the 
mere denial of religion. The claims of religion were 
false, but there was truth somewhere and I must have 
it. Simply to have the terror of hell destroyed, and 
the whole absurd scheme of salvation exploded did not 
satisfy long. I was hungry for more knowledge, and 
could not rest without it. 

As if in answer to my desire an old man who lived 
in the Montezuma hills, about twenty miles away 
from our house, got caught in the rain one evening in 
passing and had to remain all night. He was a 
Swedenborgian, and he talked Swedenborgian religion 
until midnight. 

After that he lent me Swedenborg^ books, of which 
there seemed to be an almost endless quantity, and I 
began to study them. 

I studied them thoroughly, bending my whole mind 
to the task. It was my peculiarity to believe that 
every new idea I got hold of was the saving truth my 
soul was longing for, provided only that I could 
understand it thoroughly. 

I will not deny that I got something out of 



296 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Swedenborg; but the best thing I got was the result 
of my intense application in the effort to get his 
system as a complete whole. The thorough bending 
of the mind to the accomplishment of an object always 
brings a big reward; and my reward came in the 
growth of my reasoning faculties. 

I never accepted the Swedenborgian gospel in its 
entiret}\ I had become footloose and was beginning 
to be individualized. I was forever broken of the 
habit of pinning my faith to some other person's 
sleeve, even if that person held daily audience with 
the unseen powers. I was becoming indifferent to the 
unseen powers, and was getting a mental reef on 
mundane things. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



IN" THE REFORM MOVEMENT. 

All my life I had had an aspiration to become a 
literary woman. My efforts in this direction were 
numerous and my failures many and disheartening. 

It is true that I had almost no time to spare from 
my household duties in which either to read or write, 
but somehow I managed to do both. I hurried 
through my work, stopping at intervals to run and 
put down an idea, until after a week or a month I 
had a magazine article. At least it was a magazine 
article until it was returned with the word "unavail- 
able 1 ' from the publisher to whom I sent it. 

This sort of thing made me sick in the beginning, 
but I got case-hardened after awhile, so that I was 
able to control my disappointment somewhat, but I 
cannot say that I ever enjoyed the experience. 

It is a surprise to me now, in looking back, to think 
how I stuck to the effort in spite of the fact that so 
many doors were shut in my face. "Slam, bang, get 
out of here, 11 seemed to be the universal attitude to- 

297 



298 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

wards my literary aspiration. I laugh now as I think 
of it, but it was no laughing matter then. I laugh 
still more as I think of my indefatigable persistence; 
this is something not only to laugh about, but to be 
proud of. No one ever followed the life line of desire 
with more untiring patience than I did. Of course 
this perseverance had to lead me somewhere, and 
where could it lead me but in the direction I wanted 
to go; in the direction I was travelling? 

After I went back to the farm from San Francisco 
I became very restless. Every fibre of my body and 
brain rebelled against the drudgery of the farm life. 
Hope, always strong within me, was filling me with 
the idea that I could write articles that would sell if 
I only had the time to devote to it. It was impossible 
to put this hope to the test while doing slave's work 
at least twelve hours a day. 

The doctor gave me no encouragement and no 
sympathy. He had no hesitation in piling more and 
more work on me. He had discovered a vein of quick- 
silver on our land, and was prospecting it. So in 
addition to the work of the farm I had to cook for a 
crowd of miners. I remonstrated without avail. He 
seemed to consider me a machine with power to run 
day and night. He had consideration for his horses 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 299 

and for his men and for himself, but none for me. 
This, of course, was because I failed to define and 
maintain my own position. Who will say what is our 
due if we do not say it ourselves? 

Ada and Florence at this time had gotten through 
the school in San Jose where I left them when I 
returned to the ranch from San Francisco, and were 
then learning the printer's trade in the town adjoining 
our place. So they were not far from home. 

Little Jenny was dead. Claude was away at school, 
and I was really in a position where I could assert my 
freedom for the first time in my married life. 

And I did assert it. The day arrived when the 
crowd of miners and the doctor with them came to 
dinner and found a cold stove and an empty house. 

Directly after breakfast I had stood out in the road 
with a valise containing the smallest imaginable 
wardrobe, but all I had, waiting for some passing 
wagon to take me into town. I had not long to wait, 
and soon found myself at the boarding house of my 
two daughters. I had no money, and as the girls 
were on board wages, not having learned the trade 
sufficiently to earn more, I undertook the task of 
borrowing ten dollars to pay my expenses to the city. 
I ran over the town the entire day, and it was late at 



300 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

night before I found a friend who could let me have 
this small sum. 

The next morning I was on the stage en route for 
San Francisco. I reached the city with $2.50 in my 
purse. I paid one dollar for a night's lodging and 
then began to search for a room. I found one in an 
attic that was not unpleasant, and paid my remaining 
$1.50 for it for one week in advance. I was not 
hungry, for I had the remnants of a lunch that I had 
brought with me from Lower Lake. 

I started out to hunt a situation in some publishing 
house. It was three days after the last bite of my 
food was gone before I found a place in a printing 
office, where I was to superintend and write for a poor, 
little struggling paper at the sum of six dollars a 
week. 

I had become so light-headed and so incapable of 
thinking that I barely escaped being run over in 
the street more than once. But I adhered to my 
purpose. I had said to myself many times over, "I 
am going to have life on my own terms, or I won't 
have it at all." 

I was a first-class cook and housekeeper, and I could 
have gotten dozens of such situations, but I would not 
have them. I would starve first. If food served no 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 301 

better purpose than to nourish me in my old con- 
ditions I did not want it. And I was not hungry at 
all. I was cold, and felt as if I were floating, and I 
could not think consecutively, although I held to my 
resolution to keep out of housework. I had had 
enough of that; I would uever touch it again. And 
in the old slavish sense I never have done so. A 
resolution so firm as to defy death becomes an organic 
thing, and takes its place among the unchangeable 
entities of personality in a way that no power can 
shake. I have established my own defense in this 
manner more than once, though this was the first 
time. 

The man for whom I was working advanced me a 
dollar, and it sufficed until the first week's wages were 
paid. 

Out of six dollars a week I paid the borrowed ten 
dollars the first thing. Then I saved up my money 
to bring Ada to me. In the meantime a large pub- 
lisher in the next street began to notice my writings 
and asked me to write for one of his publications. I 
did so. I wrote an article for him that attracted a 
good deal of attention. If he had paid me as he paid 
his other contributors I would have received forty 
dollars for it. But he declined to pay for it, and 



302 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

promised to befriend me in other ways, such as giving 
my daughters each a position in his office. It was on 
this promise that I brought Ada to the city where she 
entered his employment on a good salary. 

And Ada and I together soon brought Florence, and 
she, too, got an engagement in the same building. 
By this time I had resigned my poor little attic room 
and was in a small flat where our united wages made 
us very comfortable and independent and happy. 

Neither was it long until I had a more remunerative 
position than the first one I accepted. Besides the 
regular salary I derived from this position, I began to 
sell articles to the papers and magazines; and I was 
rich. I will never be richer than I was then. 

Bret Harte had just gone off The Overland Monthly 
as its editor when I began to write for it. It was 
something to write for The Overland. I really believe 
this magazine was the best representative of American 
thought of any other publication. It was the most 
vital, the most uniquely charming, the most strikingly 
characteristic of the entire lot of magazines. Jt was 
original; it dared be the best its editors knew in the 
field of literature. It did not hug any public foibles 
and seemed not to seek popularity as the others do. 

I do not mean that it was a leader in what we call 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 303 

reform work. It attempted nothing of the kind. It 
simply led in a fresher and more vigorous expression 
of literary ideas. It published articles then that the 
other magazines dared not publish for fear of trans- 
gressing some old preconceived opinions of literary 
correctness. It took a position close down to nature 
and became a transcription of natural people and 
natural thought. It waked one up as one read it, 
and made the heart warm with the glow of kinship in 
everything it contained. 

Later The Overland passed into other hands which 
sought what is considered the popular vein, and it 
became as commonplace as the others. But at the 
time it was simply perfect in its way, as the represent- 
ative of the fresh, vivid, young thought of a fresh, 
vivid, young country. 

My writings were welcomed by this magazine at 
that time and I was well paid for them. Later — when 
the magazine had changed, as I have mentioned — my 
articles were no longer received; and, indeed, all of us 
pioneer writers gradually disappeared from its pages. 
That this change was not approved of became man- 
ifest in the falling off of its subscription list, until at 
one time its publication was suspended. A year or 
two afterwards the magazine was resurrected and 



304 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

placed on its feet again; but it has never exhibited 
any marked character of its own since. 

As a writer, I came in contact with a good many 
minds that were considered quite brilliant, but I must 
say that close acquaintance rather had the effect of 
pushing me away instead - of drawing me to them. 
The egotism of so many small aspirants after literary 
glory taught me a valuable lesson; this was to lock 
my own egotism carefully away and throw the key 
down the well. 

I am not going to pretend that I had no egotism, 
but I do say that I saw the mistake of manifesting it, 
and this gave me the reputation of being one of the 
most modest of the young writers; which reminds me 
of an old axiom: "Assume a virtue that }~ou have not 
got, and after many days you will really have it." Or 
perhaps you will only appear to have it. 

But all this time I was growing in the power to 
think, and I was beginning to think on new lines. In 
consequence of being on a reform paper it was my 
duty to keep track of the labor movement as it was 
then developing in San Francisco. I attended the 
meetings of the various labor factions quite freely, 
and was often called on for a speech, but had not the 
courage to attempt it. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 305 

When I first began to go to these meetings I had 
great sympathy for the laborers; but on close ac- 
quaintance with them I lost it. I soon saw that not 
more than one in a hundred had any higher ambition 
than to change places with his employer, so that he 
might have it in his power to live without work. The 
exceptional one in a hundred, by virtue of superior in- 
telligence, soon raised himself to a better position 
where he became satisfied that the law of evolution 
was able to express itself in him without any more 
fuss on his part. 

It was here that I began to see the might of in- 
dividuality. I soon knew that individualization was 
salvation, and that every effort short of it could only 
be palliative. Men must be men before they could 
earn the reward of manhood. 

It is very true that the capitalists against whom the 
efforts of the laborers were arrayed, were no more men 
in the true sense than the laborers were. I saw that 
their accumulations were mere fortuitious aggrega- 
tions on the animal plane; but this fact did not 
invalidate my position so far as the laborer was con- 
cerned. He was not any more of a man because his 
employer fell short of the mark. In fact, I found 
that there was very little manhood to be discovered 



306 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

in the entire pot of mush; and from writing sym- 
pathetically and generously about them as I had 
formerly done, I began to score them with burning 
words and a pen that quivered with indignation. 

To think that they should be content to meet at 
stated periods for the simple purpose of airing their 
grievances, and abusing the men for whom they 
were working, began to look like a confession of 
weakness to me. "Either do something or shut up," 
I used to say when they approached me individually. 
"I am tired of your make believe in courage and man- 
hood. There is not a man among you, and you know 
it; or you would know it if you knew what it required 
to constitute a man." 

In the meantime, however, my articles began to 
attract some attention outside of San Francisco, and I 
had an offer from the Chicago Express, then the lead- 
ing paper in the world in the reform movement, to go 
on its editorial staff. 

Ada was just married, and Florence would soon be; 
and I accepted the offer. 

But even when I went to Chicago I was almost 
ready for emancipation from the movement I was 
writing for; and it was only a little over a year until 
I gave it my parting thrust in the following article: 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 307 

SLAVES AND MASTERS. 

I know the slave-driver and 1 know the slave, and I 
say that the slave-driver, selfish as he is, is a gentle- 
man in comparison with the slave. There is nothing 
in all the world so ignoble as a slave. He is in his 
true position so long as he willingly bears his servitude. 
He is fit for nothing else. Why should I care that 
his back is bent with the burdens of another? Why 
should I be distressed at his wrongs? His wrongs are 
his rights so long as he bears them willingly. That 
which would be the wrongs of freemen are for him 
his just deserts. 

I mean to speak the truth from this time on. I 
have coddled the slave and called him a man, when I 
knew there was no manhood in him. I will do it no 
longer. On the contrary, 1 mean to assert everywhere 
and on all occasions that he who wears a fetter needs 
it; that he who bears a kick, deserves it. I wash my 
hands of spirits so slavish as to take part in the in- 
justice that is crushing them. Moreover, I say that 
the bent back of the laborer, the horny hands, the 
coarse, distorted features, and the general ugliness 
that marks him, are a confession of his own sins in 
abetting the sins of his master. 

I desire to speak face to face to you, the slaves of 



308 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

the nineteenth century; to tell you how I have seen 
every effort made by philanthropists for your benefit 
fall to the ground worthless, because your own base 
influence was against it. There are Jabor papers 
working for you to which you have never contributed 
the cost of a drink of whisky. I have seen more and 
worse than this; that you have no respect for any 
man but the one that kicks you; and no trust in any 
power but that which crushes you. 

You are the obstacle, the only obstacle, in the way 
of race emancipation. Your masters are a handful; 
you are legion. Your masters are intelligent, and 
though they will not voluntarily relax their seltish 
grip on the good things of this world, not one of 
them would dare refuse if you stood up for your 
rights. But you are more besotted with the far-off 
dazzle of their gold than they are with its possession. 
They have moments when they reflect how their 
money has been gathered at your expense; moments 
when they almost wish that the system that fosters 
robbery, that makes gold king, that puts in abeyance 
every noble impulse, could be changed. But you 
adore the system; you doff the ragged cap and bend 
the servile knee before the baser part of these men's 
natures, and your only desire for liberty is for the 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 309 

sake of emulating their vices instead of their virtues. 
They know this, and they know that a social rupture 
that would transform you into millionaires at their 
expense would be the greatest possible calamity. 

For these men, selfish as they are, have benefited 
the race through the thrift of enterprise. They have 
built railroads and made the different races of men as 
one nation. They have utilized your dumb energies 
to serve mankind in serving themselves. They have 
used you as machines, running your services at the 
lowest cost compatible with your lives, until at last 
they begin to supplant you with cheaper wood and 
iron. And all this because they could do it; because 
you permitted it. 

They have done right. You were and are as worth- 
less as the dirt under your feet, except for the power 
of physical contraction and expansion in your muscles. 
You will not think. The moment one of you begins 
to think he ceases to belong to that class to whom 
this article is addressed. Your faces are prone to the 
ground to which your worn-out bodies are rapidly 
hastening. You plod and delve from day to day, 
never casting admiring eyes aloft, except when your 
masters with liveried attendants splash mud over you 
from their carriage wheels as they pass in haughty 
splendor. 



310 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

And you have the privileges of citizenship in a land 
where such privilege is denied by you to those whose 
intelligence ten generations of culture will scarcely 
enable you to comprehend — the intelligent women of 
these States. And what is more, being in the majority, 
you hold this magnificent element in check, and pre- 
vent its pure current and turn it away from that 
point where it would be of incalculable benefit, and 
where above all other influences it would benefit you 
and lift you out of your down-trodden condition. For 
American women above all others are your sym- 
pathizers. They resent for you the wrongs your 
craven souls accept. And you turn up your noses 
contemptuously when reference is made to their 
political equality. 

What are you going to do? Your muscles, the 
only part of you your masters ever needed, have been 
supplanted by the more economical substitution of 
machinery. Are you willing to cumber the earth as 
useless lumber, or are you willing to come up to the 
dignity of manhood by an effort to comprehend the 
true situation and to arouse within your brains the 
thought that will meet it? There are only two ways 
for you. Your muscles are superseded. The demand 
for them becomes continually more limited. The 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 311 

world calls on all men now for brain. It asks you for 
thought, that through thought it may develop the 
finer and as yet unexplored forces of nature. If you 
refuse to respond to this call, there remains the other 
alternative — to die and give place to those who are 
susceptible to the higher impulses of a more refined 
age. — Chicago Express. 

This article to a superficial thinker seems hard and 
cruel; but it is neither. It is simple truth. The 
slaves of labor are where they are because they will 
not use their brains. Thought has power to redeem 
them by showing them a true estimate of their own 
worth. But so long as they will not think they are 
not men. They are on a lower plane than that of 
men, and they are receiving treatment in conformity 
with the plane they are on. They have only their 
own ignorance to blame, and this is what they never 
think of blaming. 

Intelligence is the lifting power. Intelligence in- 
dividualizes. No man can seek a knowledge of him- 
self introspectively without discovering the rudiments 
of godhood within him. It is this discovery which 
gradually lifts him in the scale of being to a place 
where he looks with level eyes into the face of all 
other men. When he is able to do this his fetters — 



312 A SEAKCH FOE FKEEDOM. 

no matter what they have been — actually fall. Better 
positions in business open up to him; better surround- 
ings come about him in answer to his increased 
consciousness of power. Let a man once proclaim 
himself a freeman from this high point of intellectual 
seeing, and all the world hastens to respond. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



A GLIMPSE OF THE PROMISED LAND. 

In finishing the previous chapter, I jumped an inter- 
val of at least two years, and perhaps more; and I must 
retrace my steps in order to give my readers a true 
idea of how my growing thought was pushing me on 
and away from the pessimistic beliefs that had led me 
into the kicking field of reform. 

In first looking abroad over the world, and see- 
ing the inequality of position among the masses, we 
naturally resent it, and begin to search for some 
person or persons to whom we lay the blame. In 
California where the capitalist flourished in extra- 
ordinary glory, and where his tyranny was more felt 
than in other states, owing to the fact that the mass 
of the laborers there were the sons of the bravest men 
that the republic has produced, namely, the pioneers 
who cut their way through such enormous obstacles 
to reach the state in 1849, there was the loudest 
possible call for sympathy and assistance from one so 
situated as I had been. 

313 



314 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

I wanted somebody to blame for the situation; 
somebody besides the laborers themselves, and I be- 
came a very acceptable writer on an antagonistic plane 
of effort. 

I believed that certain social and political reform 
was all that was necessary to enable men and women 
to rise in the scale of being, to much higher positions 
of thought and action than have ever yet been at- 
tained. And so I worked for the accomplishment of 
this end. That is, I did my little best for it. I was 
an unknown writer, and my influence was small; but 
I was in earnest and put my whole soul in my work, 
believing in it with great fervency. 

But at every step I was disappointed. The people 
themselves for whom I was laboring were the greatest 
disappointment of all. They were dead to any sense 
of power within themselves, and were only alive to 
what they considered their wrongs. No thoughts of 
a higher intellectual growth stimulated them in their 
effort to obtain greater financial independence. Their 
ideas of liberty — if gratified — would lead in the direc- 
tion of unbridled license. They knew nothing of 
freedom in the true sense of the word. They had no 
idea that their fetters were of their making, no less 
than their masters, and were all to be resolved into one 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 315 

short sentence — complete ignorance of their own un- 
developed possibilities. They cared nothing for these 
possibilities. They would not institute within them- 
selves the search for what they needed in order to 
secure liberty. They did not know, and did not seem 
to wish to know, that each man holds his own heaven 
in his personality, and that the careful unfolding of 
that personality will yield him all there is. They pre- 
ferred the clashing of opinions that were not based 
upon the foundation where individual growth begins, 
but instead were the mixed outcome of life's mistaken 
beliefs. 

Instead of growing nearer to these people in sym- 
pathy, I was growing away from them. At first I did 
not see the drift of this thing, and made many futile 
attempts to regain my interest. I got so I hated to 
write a reform article, and as to reading one from any 
of the numerous exchanges, I simply could not do it. 

It would be difficult for me to describe the confu- 
sion of mind I was in. My duties in the office of the 
Chicago Express — though very light — became a night- 
mare. Major Smith, the owner of the paper, was 
generosity itself. He was, and is, one of the noblest 
men I have ever met; my fast friend then and now; 
and if every soul on earth should prove a disappoint- 



316 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

ment, the remembrance of him, his splendid manhood, 
his loyalty to his highest convictions of truth, and, 
indeed, his whole mentality would always stand before 
me in justification of my unshaken faith in the god- 
hood of man. 

I am conscious now that Major Smith himself was 
also losing interest in the people for whom he was 
laboring so faithfully; but at the time I went off the 
paper, he did not know it. He was still putting every 
effort of his strong, great life into his work, regardless 
of the fact that those for whom he thought and 
labored and sacrificed were so irresponsive and un- 
thankful. He went out of the paper later, and has 
since applied his fine business ability to building up 
another enterprise, which has been wonderfully suc- 
cessful. 

But when I left the Express he was displeased. He 
had the right to think me ungrateful. My action 
must have looked so to him. But I could not remain 
in the work. It is true that I was then incapable of 
analyzing the impulse which prompted me so power- 
fully to abandon it forever. I only recognized the 
impulse, and I was obedient to it. 

I had come to feel my work degrading to the higher 
possibilities of my brain, although I was unable to get 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 317 

even a glimpse of what those possibilities might be. 
I have been almost recklessly obedient to that some- 
thing which constantly goes before us, alluring us 
onward. I have said a thousand times that my lack 
of success lay in the fact of my incapability to be true 
to any idea or any line of thought or action long 
enough to carry it to completion. I did not know that 
this was mental growth, and so deplored it as being 
the one element in my character that prevented me 
from making a success of anything I attempted. 

To illustrate. The morning came, when, after drag- 
ging myself to the Express office, I sat at my desk 
gloomy and despondent. I went presently to the 
Major's desk, and told him I wished to start a paper of 
my own. He let me kuow that the sea of journalism 
was very tempestuous, and many barks were wrecked 
in it; and of the few that succeeded only a very small 
number were real successes. He begged me, for my 
own interest, to remain where I was. When he saw 
that his argument failed to shake me, he turned back 
to his desk very gravely, and I felt that if I left his 
employment under the circumstances I would lose the 
best friend I had in the world. 

On the road of progress it often happens that the 
warmest friendship may become a tyranny that has to 



318 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

be broken. Nothing should hold the outward-bound 
soul, and nothing could hold me. I would be free. 

What a compelling force the ideal is! And yet on 
that November morning I had no glimpse of the ideal 
that usually presented so many allurements for attract- 
ing me from sober duty. It was simply the fact that 
I had reached the end of another experience, and must 
quit, and prospect for the beginning of the line of 
travel that did, undoubtedly, unite with it, and that I 
was willing to trust blindly in an effort to find. 

I sat at my desk deliberately reasoning out the sit- 
uation. Major Smith had spoken of my bread and 
butter as being involved in my new effort. I thought 
about this, and anathematized the suggestion. u What 
do I care for bread and butter unless it feeds me to 
the actualization of higher and better hopes? 1 ' I said. 
"I don't want bread and butter except on my own 
terms. I don't want life on its present inharmonious 
plane. If there is to be nothing better in it than I 
have seen and felt, then it may close to-day for all I 
care." 

As I write these words I go back to that time; and 
I still believe the logic I then used to be one of the 
truest bits of wisdom that a growing soul can adopt. 
I did really lose all fear of want as completely as if 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 3l9 

entirely emancipated from every need of our present 
lives. I got up and put on my cloak and hood and 
went down, into the street. The morning had been 
sunshiny, but cold, when I came. It was now gloomed 
over despairingly. I never saw a more dismal sky. 
The sleet, borne on a strong wind, struck me in the 
face; the sidewalks were coated with ice. As I stood 
at the foot of the stairs I opened my purse. I had 
only twenty-five cents between me and starvation. I 
had not a friend in the city but the one I had just 
left. I was my own sole dependence. There was no 
prop in the world on which I could lean, and I knew 
it with the most vivid sense of realization. More than 
this, I knew that there was no one I wanted to lean 
upon. I doubt whether in the history of the race 
there has been a soul who stood more erect in a posi- 
tion of such complete isolation. I was so far removed 
from fear and anxiety that I gloried in my aloneness. 
I walked those icy streets like a school boy just freed 
from restraint. My years fell from me as completely 
as if death had turned my spirit loose in Paradise. 

Back to my boarding house to face the scowls of 
my landlord, whose prudent eye questioned my un- 
timely return, and who shrewdly and rightly suspected 
that next week's board bill would go unpaid. Then 



320 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

to my room and to pen and paper. I was fired by my 
sense of freedom; and what I wrote must have found 
an echo in hundreds of imprisoned spirits; for that 
article made my paper a success. 

Late in the afternoon my landlord came to my room, 
embarrassed, but resolute. He wanted to know how 
matters stood. 

"Have you been discharged by the chief? 11 . 

"No, I discharged myself. I am not going to be 
anybody's hired man any longer." 

"Is your bread insured? 11 

"I don^ concede your right to question me, but I 
believe I am glad you take the liberty. My bread is 
insured." 

"How?" 

"I am going to start a paper of my own, and I am 
going to make it a success. Sit down while I read you 
the first article I have written for it." 

He did so, and I read the article. The subject was 

It was a wonderful article. I am sure of this from 
the effect it produced — not only on my landlord— but 
on others. It was a declaration of individuality; it 
would have been a protest against bonds, but for the 
fact that it sounded notes of freedom far above all 



A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 321 

thought of bonds, and clear out of sight of them. It 
had wings to it; it arose aloft; it lifted those who 
read it into the air with it. 

That it had this effect on me was not surprising: 
but when I saw its effect on my landlord I was amazed. 
His face, which was naturally sodden, had become 
illuminated. After a pause he said, U I have perfect 
confidence in your ability to succeed. In fact I am 
ready to gamble on you. I have twenty thousand 
dollars in bank, and you can draw on me for all you 
need." 

Then I confessed that I was without means; but I 
refused to take his money, only asking hiui to wait a 
few weeks on my board bill. 

From that time on, no queen could have been treated 
with more courtesy. One day in my absence he moved 
my things down from my single rooui on the third 
floor to a lovely suite of three rooms on the parlor 
floor. Again and again he offered me money, which 
I steadily refused. 

Fate was working rapidly in my favor at that time. 
Evidently the state of mental freedom I had achieved 
was putting a compulsion on externals in a very per- 
emptory way. And oh! how happy I was. I drew 
the design for the heading of my paper, and was so 



322 A SEAKCH FOR FREEDOM. 

pleased with it that several times I got up in the night 
to look at it. I took it to the lithographer and had a 
plate made. It was sent to me by a boy several days 
later without the bill. 

When my writing was quite finished I went to the 
largest publishing house in the city and ordered twenty 
thousand copies of the paper, to be delivered at ray 
rooms on a certain day. 

In the meantime I was addressing wrappers as fast 
as I could, and making other preparations for mailing 
sample copies. 

On the third day after they were mailed I got $11.00 
on subscription. This was wealth. The next day 
brought more. Not long afterwards a rich man in 
Boston sent me a check for $250.00. Another sent 
$25.00, and others from $5.00 to $10.00. It was the 
clarion tones of that article on the "I," that caught 
the public. I wish I had the article now; but I have 
lost it. I have written several articles since then on 
the same subject, but the pure bell metal was lacking 
in the tone of all of them. Not one produced the 
effect that the first one did, 

It was the mood I was in that made the first one 
what it was. I was free; for the time being I had 
achieved an extraordinary height in human experience, 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 323 

and I wrote from that height. I was absolutely fear- 
less. The thought of poverty or any coming trouble 
could not daunt me. Every form of anxiety was be- 
neath me. The doubts of my own ability to succeed, 
which had always haunted my mind, were entirely 
gone. Heavens, what an attitude it was! 

If I could have remained there, who knows what 
might have happened? I believe this is what Jesus 
meant when he said, "If I be lifted up from the 
earth, I will draw all men unto me. 1 ' 

To be lifted is simply to be freed from the doubts 
and fears born of the world's ignorant beliefs with 
regard to man's capacity. Being freed from doubts 
and fears for a time, I was lifted. 

It is true that I tumbled down to the race level 
again, but the experience has been worth more than a 
hundred ordinary lives to me. It taught me a mighty 
lesson. If I could reach that position once, even for an 
hour, then it was possible for me to reach it and remain 
in it forever. And if possible for me, then it was 
possible for all. There must be some basis of brain 
force — though scarcely developed in any one — from 
which such thoughts as I had could be projected. It 
was unreasonable not to see this; and to-day it is my 
hope and the hope of the world that such basis does 



324 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

exist in the human organism, and that time, intro- 
spection and patient effort will develop it. 

And if developed, what then? This question did 
not face me for immediate solution. It was a question 
that shaped itself in the years that followed. Neither 
did it actually begin with the experience I have re- 
corded. There were years of close observation and 
earnest, though broken and disjointed thought that 
led up to it. 

I wonder now how far back it was when I conceived 
the idea that man had it in him to conquer all things, 
even death? It must have been born with me. It 
made me a physical coward and a mental hero. This 
seemed a great misfortune for a long time. But now 
when life is passing completely from a belief in the 
physical to a belief in the mental, it will be a misfor- 
tune no longer. 

For years after I left the church I kept reading the 
Bible, with the belief that I could find a new meaning 
to it. I went through it again and again. At last I 
thought I saw that it held the concentrated hopes of 
many ages, all pointing to the time when man should 
overcome death. And I concluded that this was why 
it was preserved as holy writ. It was the vital spark 
of a hundred dead generations, going forward to rein- 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 325 

carnation in a superior race not yet born; a race that 
would be able to overcome. Oh! how the thought 
took hold on me. 

I saw no way to its fulfillment, and yet I was dis- 
posed to experiment with it in various ways. My 
vivid imagination elaborated many a scheme pointiug 
towards it, each of which faded, to be replaced by 
others. And so the time passed and nothing seemed 
to be done. 

Then came the memorable period when I stood alone 
for a few days in the splendor of individuality, and 
saw, as in some powerful telescope, the mighty possi- 
bilities of man; and I knew that he had no impedi- 
ment in his progress but himself; no jungle he could 
not penetrate but the jungle of his own doubts and 
fears; no load he could not carry but that of his own 
self-constructed anxieties. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



ALL is mind: the substance of which woklds 

AKE MADE IS MENTAL SUBSTANCE: THOUGHT 
HAS BUILT THE VISIBLE UNIVEKSE. 

Whether it would be better through the remaining 
chapters of U A Search For Freedom" to confine myself 
to the thought development, which has established me 
so firmly in a belief of the possibility of conquering 
all appearances of evil, even those intensely obdurate 
ones we call old age and death, or whether it would 
be more satisfactory to my readers for me to tell of 
my external life and its conquests — for it has been very 
full of them — I am at a loss to decide. At all events, I 
shall now give a chapter from the unseen side; and let 
the farther narration of events rest with my future 
feelings about it. 

As I gathered mental power from the exercise of 
my reasoning faculties, it became more and more ap- 
parent to me that these faculties were limitless, and 
that their unrestrained growth through future ages 

326 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 327 

would enable us to conquer every obstacle that might 
oppose us; that we were virtually masters of life and 
death by reason of the unlimited power of unf oldment 
within our own brains. 

In all my speculations I clung to the Bible. My 
brain was so fertile in theories that the very number 
of them confused me. I felt that I needed ballast; 
and as the Bible had previously been my last resort in 
every emergency, it became so again. 

True, there was a time, just after my leaving the 
church, that I was afraid of the Bible, and turned 
almost violent in my attitude toward it. I accused it 
of being my jailer, and trembled lest it take me once 
more into captivity. But I got over this feeling and 
made friends with it. I began to put my own con- 
struction upon it, and a most astonishing construction 
it was. It was the book of life, I thought, not because 
a God above and beyond our power to comprehend 
had written it, but because it reflected the ideal facul- 
ties of so many of the sun-tipped brains of the race. 

The magnificent ideality in the prophets and seers, 
whose hopes have been projected in the book, pointed 
to a time when man should be big enough intellect- 
ually to conquer all the seemingly opposing forces in 
life, and proclaim himself master of death. 



328 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Having formed this belief, I then went to work to 
find in the Bible the evidence necessary to establish it 
more firmly. 

And it is astonishing how much of such evidence I 
really found there. The new construction I put upon 
almost every chapter would make a book of great 
interest, as a matter of curiosity, whether it would 
possess any actual merit or not. But to this day it 
seems to me that from the centre of self in each in- 
dividual who wrote the Bible, there went out a stream 
of light leading far into the future, and partly il- 
luminating the time when man would be a free citizen 
of this world, with power to construct a most potent 
heaven out of it. The prophecies relate to this life; 
they concern bodies, and not souls; they deal with this 
world, and not some future one. 

Much of the Bible contains wonderful truth of a 
purely metaphysical character. Many of its narratives 
are delineations of truths inherent in the human con- 
stitution, and relating to certain phases of conscien- 
tious individual development. 

Who, for instance, has not been in the whale's belly, 
imprisoned there for the same reason that Jonah was; 
that is, because he was afraid to express his highest 
conviction? 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 329 

God (the voice of his highest conviction) told Jonah 
to go to Nineveh and proclaim, "Yet forty days and 
Nineveh shall be destroyed! 1 ' Jonah refused to do it. 
He was afraid to trust the word, though spoken from 
the highest point of intelligence he knew. Then his 
whole mentality went into darkness, and he could see 
no light anywhere. He was dead within himself; he 
was shirking his duty; he was "denying his God." All 
nature seemed arrayed against him; no new, vitalizing 
thought was born in his brain, and could not be so 
long as the pressure of an undone deed was pushing 
against his conscience for execution. 

The entire meaning of the little narrative is this: 
Belief becomes potent only in externalization. When 
we refuse to express or to externalize our most per- 
emptory thoughts, they trouble us to such an extent 
that growth is stultified so long as this condition re- 
mains. It was fear that held Jonah from expressing 
his positive belief. His case is worthy of record. There 
is no instance of courageous mastery in history that 
excels it. He did what he was afraid to do because he 
thought he was right. 

And in the end Neneveh was not destroyed. There 
can never be a grander lesson taught than this last 
fact. The word he had spoken in utmost faith did not 



330 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

prove true. And what does this mean? It means 
that on the road of progression a man must do and be 
the best he knows regardless of consequences, regard- 
less of the fact that to-morrow's knowledge may prove 
every assertion of to-day an error. This is forging 
ahead in spite of opposition, the opposition of igno- 
rance, which is the only opposition any one ever has. 
And this forging ahead, cleaving a way through the 
untried jungle of doubts and fears that surrounds us, 
is growth. 

The story of Jonah is the story of a man who dared 
to stand by his convictions in the face of his own 
fears. 

The Bible is full o£ such records if properly under- 
stood. All of them relate to the building of man — 
the master. 

The Bible had again become my guide in my effort 
to see my way out of the clouds and shadows, that 
pressed so densely upon my mental vision, while I was 
attempting to find the road leading away from disease, 
old age and death. . 

The love of beauty has amounted almost to a mania 
with me all my life. I doubt whether I ever was in- 
spired to an effort of any kind, that the hope of making 
something appear more attractive did not actuate me. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 331 

And what inducements life was holding out! How 
things did grow, and kept growing! The mystery of 
perpetual unfoldment was in everything. I did not 
reason on this wonderful fact at the time of which I 
am writing, but I had an undefined perception of it 
that was all pervading, and that filled me with a sense 
of security. The words that most frequently came to 
me were, "I don't understand now, but I shall do so 
sometime; lean wait." 

The fact is, I was growing almost as unconsciously 
as the peach grows, simply because I was non-resistant 
to the ubiquitous good that surely does pervade all 
things. I had turned my mind loose from dogmas of 
every description, and the eternal life was beginning 
to flow through it. 

I talked to some of my friends on the subject of 
conquering death, but no one took any interest. Many 
of them said that death itself was a conquest that 
liberated the spirit from this gross body; and that was 
what they desired. 

But I knew better than this. I knew that the ap- 
proach to death was by the road of many and con- 
stantly increasing weaknesses, and that death was the 
culmination of all weakness. There was no semblance 
of conquest in it; nothing but defeat. It was the 



332 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

overcoming of the will. People do not want to die; 
and to be compelled to do what one does not want to 
do is surrendery, and not mastery. 

I suppose I was gradually growing stronger in my 
selfhood, for I was beginning to lay claims to life in 
a way that set aside all limitations. There was a 
growing strength within me that caused me to 
repudiate every form of fatalism. The preacher 
might preach of death; a voice within me negatived 
his word. Everything in the world, and that had ever 
been in it, denied my claim, but I only made it 
stronger in the face of such opposition. 

"J am," was my constant thought; and these words 
always bristled with a sense of unconquerableness. 

I can trace the growth of my will step by step 
from the moment that I recorded in my own mind my 
claim to deathlessness. 

It became a difficult thing for me to stick to my 
text so far as my paper, The Woman's World, was 
concerned. It was a woman's suffrage paper, and I 
had lost interest in the subject, in view of the greater 
subject that really does circumference all reforms. 

Mary Eddy, the author of "Science and Health," 
got hold of a copy of The Woman's World, and wrote 
me that I was almost a Christian Scientist. With 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 333 

her letter came her book. It was then in two small 
volumes. I tried to read it; but it was nonsense to 
me. Some of her later editions make her meaning 
clearer, but the one she sent me did not contain a 
single thought that was in any manner related to my 
way of thinking. 

With the books and the letter came an advertise- 
ment of her and her work she wished me to insert in 
payment of the books. The advertisement was long 
enough to occupy the most of the space in my little 
paper. I threw the whole outfit in the waste basket, 
and forgot about it until she wrote again ordering me 
most peremptorily to send the books back. The 
books had been in use until they were nearly worn 
out before they rea2hed me, and the curious part was 
that any person could ever have read them enough to 
even soil them. 

This was the first I had heard of Christian Science. 
It made no impression on me. Later I had my in- 
terest aroused, and joined a class in Chicago, where I 
think I came into a clear understanding of the whole 
movement. 

I soon learned that the movement had no objective 
point; it was the brewing of an idea that did not 
understand its own meaning; it was the undeveloped 



334 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

soul of a new truth not yet clothed with the body 
that would make it of practical benefit to the world, 
It was a prophecy of mighty things to come, and this 
was all it was, or is. But that of which it was the 
nebular and prophetic beginning was on its way to 
the rescue of mankind, and it is growing in power 
every day. Christian Science is the outer vestibule 
leading to a mighty system of thought. Entering 
into it is the beginning of salvation from sorrow and 
disease, old age and death. Remaining in it, under the 
mistaken belief that it is all there is, will not per- 
manently save any person. Salvation depends upon 
eternal progression; eternal growth in the knowledge 
of life. No one can stand still, and yet continue to 
live. Death is the penalty of stagnation. Indeed, death 
and stagnation are synonymous terms. 

This is what ails the churches. They do not save; 
they only postpone. The time to save is when salva- 
tion is most needed; the place to save is where life's 
ills are thickest. And where is that? Right here in 
the world to-day. 

And what are life's ills? They are sickness and 
sorrow and poverty and old age and death. These are 
the things we wish to be saved from ; and now is a better 
time to begin the work of salvation than after death. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 335 

For who knows what the words "after death 11 may 
mean? Endless numbers of people think they know; 
and theories concerning this state lie thick all down 
the ages, but not one item of absolute knowledge has 
been brought forth. 

Nature is the most potent truth we have. Looking 
within these natural selves of ours, we find that the 
strongest of all implanted desires is for life, and more 
life, and still more life; life at first trying to reach 
out beyond the grave; and then — when all its springs 
have been strengthened by its constantly growing 
hope and faith, comes the more vital thought of life 
that need not yield to death; life that bridges the 
grave with intelligence — the knowing how to con- 
tinue to live. 

Gradually the great truth dawns that man is master 
of himself and his surroundings; that there is no 
power in the universe that prescribes his limitations; 
that says to him, "Stay where you are; go no farther." 

And so, by slow degrees, I came to recognize man's 
place in the world, and his relation to his surround- 
ings; and great joy — even exultation — took possession 
of me. Time, fate, circumstance, were no longer my 
foes nor even my obstructions. 

Before I reached this condition, I had — through 



336 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

years of concentrated thought— climbed to the light 
of the one truth on which salvation from old age and 
death rests. 

It is the mighty fact that all is mind; that the 
substance which in the past we have called dead 
matter is a mental substance; a substance, every atom 
of which, thinks, or holds in latency the power to 
think. This one truth when understood is itself sole 
conqueror of old age and death. Nothing more is 
needed but the perfect understanding of it to close 
every avenue of weakness to every member of the 
race, and to start all persons on an unbroken road of 
endless progression through the coming centuries; 
and to start them, too, in a way that insures greater 
strength to them with every advance step they take. 

If a man is a purely mental creature, and this is 
precisely what he is, then knowing is being. The less 
he knows, the weaker he is and the more liable to be 
overcome by the obstructions he meets, and the more 
surely will he fall a victim to disease and death. 
Whereas, the more he knows, the stronger he becomes 
and the easier he finds it to overcome difficulties, un- 
til a perception of the fact that he is master of all 
things begins to dawn on him. A mental perception 
of individual strength is invariably a physical per- 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 337 

ception of it also, because mind and body are one. In 
other words, the body is all mind, of which thought — 
the positive pole of the body — is the shaping and 
directing power. 

As I have said previously, the grandest truth of this 
or any age is the fact that man is a mental statement 
of knowledge, and not a physical creation of decaying 
matter. 

This is true not only of man but of all things that 
exist; it is true of the grass and of the birds and bees; 
it is true of the rocks; it is the ample explanation of 
geology; it is true of the stars; it is the basis of 
astronomy, and accounts for the formation of planets 
and for their movement in their spheres. It explains 
all things; it is the key that unlocks the entire 
mystery of life and death and disease and of every 
enigma that has ever presented itself for solution to 
man, or that ever will present itself. 

The knowledge that all is mind, that the universe 
in all its parts from atoms to suns is but a mental 
statement, will — when studied out — prove its own ex- 
planation, and establish the fact that there is nothing 
concealed from the growing mind of man. 

Moreover, this statement — that all is mind — is the 
great turning point in the race's history. It is the 



338 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

point of ascension from the fatalistic theory of cause 
and effect, as based upon a belief in dead matter, to 
the freedom of personal creativeness, through the 
acquisition of such truths as go with the understand- 
ing that man is a mental creature who has ever been 
the accretion of thought; and who can go on in an 
unbroken line of growth by continuing to think 
newer and nobler and higher thoughts than he has 
heretofore been thinking. 

The objection brought to bear on this idea comes 
from persons who will not use their reasoning powers 
enough to see the matter in its entirety. They say, 
"Why, mind is an invisible thing; and if man is all 
mind, then he could not be seen," etc. 

But mind is not invisible. Everything of which we 
receive knowledge through any one of the senses is 
mind — the trees, the rocks, the water, all things. 
And what proof have we that they are mind? This; 
each one of them is a certain form of knowing. Each 
one of them is a recognition of life. To recognize is 
to think. The atom thinks; it recognizes within itself 
the law of attraction, and in obedience to this recog- 
nition it unites with some other atom, thus becoming 
the commencement of a more complex life than it had 
heretofore been. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 339 

But this subject has been so thoroughly explained 
in my other works, that I must pass on and leave it 
alone. That it is worth investigating the reader may 
well believe, when I say that it lies at the foundation 
of man's power to become master of life and all 
of life's forces, even to the overcoming of his last 
enemy — death. 

The mighty facts springing from a knowledge of 
the true solution of man — namely — that he is a 
mental creature, self-created and self-creating, through 
his power to evolve knowledge out of his own organ- 
ism, has been going on for years in my mind; and 
converts to the idea have been quite rapidly made. 

And this decides me to go back and bring up some 
personal experiences, that I had thought I could com- 
plete this "Search For Freedom" without touching 
upon. 

That I have found freedom can be seen by any one 
who has read the latter part of this work carefully. 
I am, indeed, emancipated from every form of anxiety 
and fear, and this is freedom. I have become 
emancipated through the knowledge of man's powers 
of mastery; and I know that the exercise of such 
powers by him is demonstration over everything that 
has ever seemed to hold him in bondage. 



CHAPTER XX. 



COMING TO FLORIDA. 

The trouble with an ordinary autobiography is that 
one does not know when to stop it. The author is rarely 
so accommodating as to die and leave the last chapter 
to be finished by an addenda from the publisher. 

And if this is the case with the autobiography of 
one who believes in the power of death, and who ex- 
pects to die, how much more difficult it is where the 
author is quite sure she is in process of overcoming 
death, and who could make a new chapter to her book 
every week through eternity. 

This is precisely my case. The increasing vitality 
of my thought since I began to find out that man is 
not the creature of blind fate, neither the puppet of a 
God outside of himself, has added so much to my 
bodily powers — the body and thought being one — that 
I really cannot, in looking forward, see anything for 
myself but a still greater increase of life's forces and, 
therefore, still greater length of clays, all pointing to 
the overcoming of old age and death. 

340 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 341 

Once, while pondering deeply upon this subject — 
this was before T came into an understanding of the 
law of growth — I had what a superstitious person 
might call a vision. I seemed to lapse from my state 
of consciousness for a time, and to find myself far 
away from my surroundings. I was with my living 
children walking on the seashore. It was high tide, 
the beach was narrow, and the waves were coming in 
and wetting our feet and our skirts, impeding our 
progress and making us quite wretched. 

The sand dunes rose high on the left hand as we 
moved along laboriously. On top of the sand dunes, 
keeping pace with us as we. went onward, was Jennie — 
the little girl I had lost. It was high and dry where 
she was; and I watched her light and graceful move- 
ments eagerly, with my face turned up toward her so 
constantly I scarcely noted the wretchedness of my 
own condition. After going on in this way for some 
time, our path turned gradually upward, while the 
path Jennie was on began to turn downward. 
Presently it terminated in a lovely little valley about 
half way up to the top of the dunes. It was the 
quaintest little valley imaginable. It gave me the 
feeling of having been translated out of some old 
Bible story. In the midst of it was a well walled 



342 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

about with stone, and over the well an arch with the 
words, "This is the water of life. He that drinketh 
of this water shall thirst no more." The water was 
of diamond clearness, and we drank it and felt rested. 
Then we sat down on the stone seat, and who should 
be with us there but Jennie? And oh! the shining 
light in her eyes, and oh! the happiness, the sense of 
completeness that fell upon us, never — as it seemed- - 
to be broken any more! 

This circumstance made a strong impression on me 
at the time. It gave me courage to hold to my highest 
thoughts and hopes. And yet I should have held to 
them anyhow. I could not drop them; they held to 
me; they were a part of me. 

In the meantime, while I was nourishing the 
thoughts that pointed so constantly to man's conquest 
of death, and to his ability to work this planet over 
in conformity with the high ideals which I knew he 
possessed in latency, and while I had hard work to 
keep from boring my friends with superfluous talk on 
the subject, I met Mr. C. C. Post, on whom I made 
such an impression with my earnestness that he en- 
couraged me to tell him all about it. What he really 
thought of me in the early days of our acquaintance I 
do not know; but if he got tired of me at times, he got 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 343 

rested and came back to see me again. In July, 1883, 
I was married to him; and I believe I can truthfully 
say that our relations have been a source of the 
greatest pleasure and growth to each. Personally he 
is pleasing in manner and appearance, with the face 
of a student and the temperament of an artist, all 
flavored with a sense of humor that adds greatly to 
his power to please. A man of broad thought and 
ready speech, a poet as well as a logical reasoner, he is 
widely known as a writer and speaker upon both 
political and metaphysical subjects. His articles in 
Freedom have attracted more universal attention and 
favorable comment than have those of any other 
correspondent, just as his published works of fiction 
outsold all other works of their class at the time they 
were issued; and they still continue to sell. My 
regret is that his time is so consumed in business 
affairs connected with the upbuilding of the place, and 
the hote' for which he feels himself responsible, and, 
indeed, for the development of all our plans for the 
future, as to prevent him from giving his entire at- 
tention to writing and the study of metaphysical sub- 
jects. 

But who knows what man's relation to woman is? 
It may be that his executive power bears a strictly 



344 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

counterpartal relation to her ideality. One thing 
certain, woman is not u lesser man, 1 ' as Tennyson said; 
she is all that man is not. They are to each other 
complement, fulfillment. But this is a matter not to 
be discussed now — at a time when woman is only 
beginning to be faintly awakened to what she is, and 
when man knows no more about her than she knows 
about herself. 

Some three years after my marriage to Mr. Post we 
came South. We were on a search for conditions. 
We hardly knew what the conditions would be; but 
we had worn out the old ones, and had been worn out 
in them, until a complete change became imperative. 

Indeed, Mr. Post was a very sick man. He had 
worked too hard at the desk, and death threatened him 
in the shape of consumption. When we left Chicago 
not one of our friends expected to see him alive 
again. 

This was soon after we had begun to make a study 
of metaphysical subjects, and the opportunity of test- 
ing what little we knew about the power of mind to 
control matter, was surely present in his case. 

We went to Douglasville, Georgia, and there, in a 
little country hotel, we fought the battle with death 
and won the victory. As liealth began to be es- 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. -345 

tablislied in Mr. Post's wasted frame, a wild curiosity 
was manifested to find out what cured him. It was 
believed that I possessed some secret power that was 
denied to others, and I became a marked individual in 
the community. Especially the negroes were affected 
by Mr. Post's cure, and they came to me with their 
complaints and begged to be cured also. At this 
point I could have done the work that Schlatter did 
and established a world-wide reputation as a healer; 
for among an intensely negative people, it is only 
necessary to speak the word for health and it will 
soon manifest itself. 

At first it was the colored people who came to me 
for relief; but soon there was another class came. 
Southern society is divided into three classes; the 
negroes, the poorer class of white people who are 
tenants on the land they plant, and the upper class 
who are property owners, and in every way superior 
to the others. I only had a short experience with the 
middle class when the more intelligent and refined 
people began to crowd all the others out. 

I soon got tired of the whole matter, especially as 
it took up my entire time and there was no money of 
any consequence in it; and we needed money. I had 
sold The Woman's World before leaving Chicago, and 



346 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

Mr. Post had been unable for months to earn anything 
with his pen. It was quite a long time before he re- 
covered his mental vigor sufficiently to enter the field 
of literature again. 

And even when he became stronger his inclinations 
turned against it; he wished for some ground in which 
to dig and plant. He had been brought up on a farm, 
and it was strange to see how he really longed to come 
into close relations with old mother earth once more. 

The result was that we bought some land adjoining 
the town, and began to improve it. But money was 
none too plenty, and neither of us was earning any- 
thing. 

But all the time, every day and hour, my thoughts 
kept running more and more on the subject of how to 
overcome disease, old age and death. My experience 
in healing the people about me threw wonderful 
light over the whole field of man's, as yet, undeveloped 
power in this direction. I saw how rapidly all nega- 
tive beliefs — which are beliefs grounded in ignorance 
of the law of evolution — were displaced and wiped out 
by the positive beliefs generated in a brain that 
refused to accept any statement of man's limitation. 

Each day my former belief in an overruling power 
with its fatalistic results was drawing down from the 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 347 

mirage of an imaginary heaven and coming closer to 
the earth. This forced me into the study of nature 
and her laws; and I studied them so faithfully that 
they brought me splendid reward. I became a verita- 
ble product of earth, submerged in her fruitful soil — 
so to speak — where, like some seed or bulb, I took 
root and began to feel the throbbing pulse of mother 
earth quickening the life within me. 

I voluntarily became as a little child. I presented 
no opposing belief to the influx of natural knowledge 
which is constantly flowing from the earth in expres- 
sions of use and beauty, and which still holds life for 
us in greater quantity than man dreams of, if we will 
but discard visionary theories that lead us far away 
from the nourishing breast of this dear mother into 
regions of thin vapor where we starve. 

That man's course is upward, and that he will 
eventually grow away from the earth is true; but the 
effort to lift him above the earth before the earth has 
matured him — that is, before she has vested her entire 
power of reproduction in him, is like taking a young 
plant out of the ground and suspending it in the air 
and then expecting it to grow. 

The man's hopes and beliefs have been lifted above 
the present plane of his living. He believes himself 



348 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

to be the result of some supernatural creation, and 
dependent on some supernatural power; when in strict 
truth he is but a vegetable evolved into higher knowl- 
edge of the law of growth than the other vegetables 
that go to sustain his life. The same forces con- 
tribute to his existence that contribute to the ex- 
istence of a cabbage or a cow. The man is both 
cabbage and cow, with the added intelligence of 
centuries of unfoldment by the acquisition of more 
experiences than the cabbage and cow have had, 
which experiences have given him a superior intelli- 
gence to that of his progenitors, and, by reason of his 
superior intelligence, a superior form. 

For intelligence expresses itself in form. From be- 
ginning to end — if there could be an end — in every 
form, and under all circumstances, it holds true that 
knowing is being. And this is because the universe is 
not composed of dead matter, but of the vital, ever 
changing, ever substantial and real manifestation of 
mind. 

Mind is intelligence in manifestation; it is thought 
in expression. To say that a man is as he believes, is 
the key that unlocks the whole situation. Everything 
from the grain of sand up through each ascending 
group or species in the scale of existence is just what 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 349 

it believes. This means that its form and its powers 
are but the expression of as much as it knows. 

The one great truth standing head and shoulders 
above all the truths ever ripened by the human brain 
is the truth that all is mind or intelligence. The 
universe is but a huge system of brain, evolving 
thoughts; and thoughts are things. They are actual 
substances. They may be thoughts rooted in the 
ground as the trees, or they may be thoughts flying 
in the air as the birds, but in every case they are 
thoughts — generating still other thoughts. 

That life is perpetuated by the growth and develop- 
ment of thought from within these human bodies of 
ours is a scientific fact. It does not rest on hearsay, 
nor is it an idle theory like the baseless fabric of 
salvation by the grace of God. It is a demonstrable 
thing when the foundation principle underlying all 
truth is found. And the foundation principle is at 
last found in the statement that the substance com- 
monly accepted as dead matter is living, vital mind, 
expressing itself in the myriad of forms everywhere to 
be seen and felt and heard. 

Man's continued powers of growth rest on the fact 
that thought is life, and that his ability to project 
thought into higher channels than has ever been done 
before is his positive guarantee of more life, and life 



350 A SEARCH FOE FREEDOM. 

on a higher or more positive plane than he has here- 
tofore known. 

More thought, higher thought is more life and 
higher life; and both are vital force. An N acceleration 
of vital force expressed in our bodies means the 
banishment of disease, old age and death. 

As I said before, this thing is susceptible of the 
most scientific explanation. It is a fact, and is being 
demonstrated satisfactorily by more than one person 
now living. 

I can look back in my own experience and see the 
gradual ripening of thought up to the point where I 
knew for a certainty that men did not have to die. 
The whole process was entirely mental. There has 
never been what the world would call a physical effort 
in it. I have not strengthened my muscles by exercise; 
I have not added to my vigor by any form of medica- 
tion; I have simply reasoned on the great problem of 
man's existence until I know what he is and how he 
came to be what he is. 

Knowing how he came to be what he is put me in 
possession of all the knowledge I needed regarding 
the law of his growth. 

I never could have acquired this knowledge had I 
remained in the old race beliefs of physical causation. 
It was only as I made the transition of thought from 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 351 

the basis of matter to that of mind that the whole 
thing opened to me, and I knew that knowing was 
being, and that more knowing was greater and more 
powerful being; and so on until man had climbed up 
the scale from the negative to the positive pole of life 
where he saw for himself, with his own intelligence, 
that he was master of all things including old age 
and death. 

I am not going to write much on this subject. 
The whole of it is fully given in my other published 
works. Therefore, I shall again speak of the enter- 
prise that has grown out of our beliefs in the allness 
of life and the absoluteness of mind. 

Before we bought the land of which I have spoken 
we had to solve the financial question. As we were 
always talking on the inexhaustible subject of met- 
aphysics, Mr. Post suggested that I write a series of 
lessons and put them on the market. I did so, and 
announced the fact through my old paper The 
Woman's World. I charged twenty-five dollars a set 
for them. They were all in manuscript, and the 
student was required to copy and return them. The 
lessons have since then been put into print, and have 
sold rapidly at a greatly reduced price. 

But it seems strange to me, even now, that I should 
have put them on the market as I did and made such 



352 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

a decided victory of the effort. The first twenty-five 
dollars that came surprised me, though I was expecting 
it. Then more orders came, and still more, until I was 
dazed with success. As a result of this we bought 
the land and began to improve it. We planted fruit 
and nut trees; we built a lovely home, and were the hap- 
piest people that ever lived I expect. We had money 
to spend in the effort to assist others. The people 
about us— though not understanding our ideas in the 
least — were strongly attracted toward us, and we 
loved them in return. Always believing in innocent 
pleasures we gave many entertainments, and enjoyed 
them ourselves quite as much as our friends did. 

But students of metaphysics began to come to us 
from a distance, and we soon saw that we could not 
remain in so small a town where the hotels were in- 
adequate to accommodate persons of refinement and 
culture — such as have always been attracted to the 
investigation of high thought. It became imperative 
that we should go somewhere else. 

Just six miles from us on the road leading to 
Atlanta was the celebrated Sweetwater Park with its 
large and splendid buildings. It was a summer resort, 
and my classes were held in winter. But the pro- 
prietor of the Park consented to open his house to us 
provided there were enough of us to pay him for the 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 353 

trouble. So we sold our beautiful home and went 
there with sixty or seventy others, and were there for 
six months. 

But finally we wanted to get away. We had always 
desired to be close to some large body of water; more- 
over we had been having many a suppressed longing 
for Florida. And then, too, a plan for making a sort 
of nucleus to the great thought we were entertaining 
had taken root in our minds and was growing rapidly. 

Just what we wanted we were not ripe to define; 
but we had seen that in whatever place we remained 
long enough to impregnate our surroundings with 
our views, that everything seemed charged with a 
strangely magnetic power to draw others to us. 

Examining this thing from the standpoint of our 
foundation statement that all is mind, we perceived 
that it was the actual sprouting of the new and 
mighty truth relating to man's powers of conquering 
death, and that all that this truth needed was its 
establishment in proper soil, and with fostering con- 
ditions, in order to take root and grow until it had 
filled the world with its life-saving influences. 

And so presently — without hurry, and also without 
rest, for we were growing in the strength of the most 
powerful thought ever conceived by man — we came to 
Florida. 



CHAPTER XXL 



A VISION OF THE DAUNTLESS "I. 

I cannot easily forget the night we reached Daytona, 
Florida. The depot then stood on the bank of the 
Halifax river; the Palmetto House was some half mile 
lower down. We took the hack and were driven to it 
beneath the many palm trees and the wonderful live 
oaks. 

No one has ever been able to describe such a night 
as that was. The full moon was rising over the trees 
on the opposite side; the river was a flawless mirror. 
An unbroken column of light that one might have 
crossed upon, judging by its appearance, spanned the 
stream and united the two banks — a bridge of silver. 
The air was soft, balmy, magnetic. It is no use to 
talk about the feeling in things being imaginary. I 
could feel in that atmosphere messages of infinite 
peace from across the wide ocean that was breaking 
upon its coast only a mile away. It was an atmos- 
phere purified of personal limitations and personal 
doubts in its long journey over the beautiful waves; 

354 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 355 

waves that embossomed the heavens above them no 
less than the depths below them, and that thus seemed 
to symbol life in its eternalness. 

We spent the entire winter in Daytona, and in the 
spring returned to Georgia, where, in Atlanta, I 
started the weekly paper Freedom, which was a 
success from its first issue. 

After less than a year in Atlanta, I moved the paper 
to Boston, and remained there with it for a short time. 
But the climate of Florida and the clearness and 
purity of its atmosphere, and the beauty of it, kept 
drawing me as no other place ever has done. So I 
came back to find that it was, indeed, the ideal spot I 
had always been looking for. 

Just across the river from Daytona lies a long, 
narrow stretch of land, washed on its east side by the 
Atlantic Ocean. A portion of this we purchased and 
laid off in town lots, and began to improve by grading 
and shelling the streets and planting palm trees and 
magnolias and oaks and bays along their borders. 

In point of natural advantages the location is 
simply unsurpassed. The ground is high and dry. 
Not a drop of stagnant water is to be found upon it. 
The swamp land, for which Florida is noted, lies 
farther inland, and no breath from it comes to us by 



856 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

reason of the wind that blows from the ocean. And 
this wind is not a severe wind as many ocean breezes 
are. It is just strong enough to temper the heat of 
summer and keep it deliciously cool. The mercury 
never rises so high here during the warm weather as it 
does in any of the northern states; and in the three 
summers I have spent here, I have not felt the heat 
as much as I felt it in a few weeks in Boston and 
Chicago. That the place is lovely in winter is well 
known; but that there are parts of the state that are 
even more lovely in summer does not seem to be be- 
lieved as yet. 

The peninsula we are on is one of these rarely 
favored places. With the Halifax river — which is 
simply an inlet from the ocean — on one side of us, and 
the ocean itself on the other side, it is almost as if 
the breath of eternal purity encompassed us. 

And here we are, holding for the manifestation or the 
outward expression of our highest, our most idealistic 
hopes. Other persons of similar hopes are joining us 
here; and the pure natural air is becoming impregnated 
with a new cast of thought from brains that are no 
longer steeped in the world's old negative beliefs in 
the power of disease and death; thought generated 
from higher reasoning powers than the race has ever 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 357 

used; not higher than it is capable of using, but 
higher than it is in the habit of using, while under 
the rule of the deaf, dumb and blind religions of the 
day. For religions are hitching posts to which the 
people's brains are tied, and about which they meander 
round and round in a circle, without advancing a step. 

We are the apostles of endless progression through 
mental unfoldment; we have no creeds; growth is 
at eternal enemity with creeds, and we are a growing 
people. 

We look abroad and see that life on its present 
footing is not worth having. The few evanescent and 
hopelessly ignorant years of adolescence bring us to 
the point where decay actually begins, even though 
its manifestations are postponed a few more years. 
Then comes the breaking up of old age, ending in 
death. 

No wonder that the superficial thinker, deeply dis- 
contented with the unsatisfactory brevity of a life 
that was merely a hint of what might be, should cast 
about in his brain for another chance of existence 
under more favorable conditions; and no wonder that, 
with his ignorance of man's endless power of mental 
unfoldment, he should hit upon the God-made heaven 
of the future. It is sufficiently apparent why he did 



358 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

it. In his conception we perceive the dawn; the great 
truth in its earliest effort to come forth through a 
mentality not yet grown big enough to give birth to 
it in its fullness. 

"Where there's a will there's a way" To put the 
broadest construction upon this old adage, knocks 
down all the bars in existence, and liberates man to 
the freedom of the universe. We have the will. The 
will is prophecy of the way. The will could not exist 
if the way did not. The two are co-relative; they are 
the Siamese twins of advancement. 

To describe briefly our present effort in this place 
will close the volume. 

We are here to learn, and we are here to teach. We 
have made some marked improvements in the place 
already, and more are contemplated. It is our in- 
tention to build a school that will take pupils of all 
ages from the baby of the Kindergarten up to the 
gray-headed student of life's forces and prospects; for 
the gray head is as much of a baby in his capacity of 
farther unfoldment on the present side of life as the 
baby is. Age is no abridgement to any person's 
chances, if he will only begin to do his own thinking. 
The awakening of the reasoning powers, and the 
direction of them toward the investigation of man, 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 359 

is the beginning of the wisdom that saves from death. 
Mental Science is the study of man. A knowledge 
of man is a knowledge of the universe; and this knowl- 
edge, concentrated in the individual, is power; power 
over all things. 

In the school we mean to establish here, we will 
employ the best lecturers and teachers on a wide range 
of subjects; teachers of Oriental History; teachers of 
Natural History; teachers who are conversant with 
the rise and decay of the various systems of religious 
thought; teachers of Evolution; teachers of Mental 
Philosophy as given forth in the writings of the great 
metaphysicians of the past; teachers who will sift 
these various ideas and submit them to the test of 
the world's latest and best idea, that represented by 
modern Mental Science. We will establish a Con- 
servatory of Music when we get around to it, and of 
Art also. Indeed, nothing that will aid in the higher 
unfoldment will be left out. 

Our design, with regard to this place, is to make it 
an opening from the physical plane of activity — in 
which all force is limited by what we call the laws of 
causation — into the limitless realm of mental activity 
where knowing is being. In other words, we are 
making a doorway from mortality to immortality 



360 A SEAECH FOR FREEDOM. 

through which all may pass — if they choose to learn 
how to do so — into higher conditions of existence than 
they now deem possible. It is a doorway from the 
entire realm of the world's past dim, uncertain, but 
always belittling, beliefs of itself, into a realm of ul- 
broken personal consciousness of such potency as to 
destroy utterly all cognition of those shadows upon 
human intelligence called disease, old age and death. 

People cannot make this change without knowing 
how to do it; and the establishment of this school is 
to teach them how. It will be a school for the higher 
education of the race. Teachers will be educattd 
here who will go out in the world to establish branch 
schools like the parent institution. 

When one looks abroad over the entire social 
organization of the race, he cannot fail to see how the 
old and effete beliefs of ages of past ignorance are 
bolstered up. 

This system of bolstering up is a perfect thing in 
its way, and it would be difficult to improve on it. 
Look at the schools and colleges all over the land for 
the sole use of perpetuating the old, dead ideas; look 
at the thousands of churches with their ministers and 
their wealth, that meet Sunday after Sunday for the 
exclusive purpose of preventing the birth of free and 
original thought. 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 361 

It is true that the persons who contribute to this 
system, by which the old beliefs are kept .operative 
long after they are dead, are mainly actuated by 
honest intentions. They are not willfully trying to 
keep back race intelligence. It is their ignorance of 
the fact that eternal progress alone is eternal life that 
makes them so afraid that the people will learn 
something not endorsed by their forefathers. But it 
is ol small consequence to the sufferers by mistaken 
methods whether blunders are perpetuated honestly 
or dishonestly. The thing has got to stop sometime, 
and consideration for the motive and character of the 
persons behind the error is not to be weighed in the 
balance. 

Let us imagine that there were schools all over the 
land for the purpose of teaching people to think, in- 
stead of, as now, closing the avenues of original 
thought within them by cramming them with the 
thoughts of others; thoughts that failed to save the 
originators themselves, and that stand comdemned from 
this very fact. Let us imagine that every church on 
earth was converted into a scientific lecture hall 
where the efforts of the best brains would be to bring 
forth the most comprehensive truths on all the prob- 
lems of this life, and especially the truths bearing 
upon that problem of all problems — man. 



362 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

How long would it be before the whole world 
would blossom upward toward the sun of all in- 
telligence in a way to produce the fruit of perfect 
righteousness (rightness) throughout every depart- 
ment of life, if the vast machinery of the present 
system of organized effort for the perpetuation of 
useless creeds were devoted to the attempt to bring 
forth the undeveloped capacity of the race? 

This mighty capacity is the unknown quantity 
waiting solution in order to bring all the broken cords 
of life into harmony and establish heaven here on 
earth. 

Who cares for a heaven of the future? Who does 
not know that so far as practical happiness is con- 
cerned that there is no future? We only have what 
each moment yields. We may look forward toward 
the future, but the thoughts thus projected out of 
ourselves weaken us in the present, and bring the 
future no nearer. To live each moment as it passes 
is the only way to live; all else is life deferred, ending 
in death. 

But this sketch of my "Search for Freedom 1 ' is 
nearing its close. Have I found what I have been 
searching for? 

Yes I have. I am emancipated from every belief 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 363 

that stands in the way of my farther development. 
The bars to my future progress are down, and this is 
freedom in quite a wide sense. If it is not freedom 
from all ignorance, it is, at least, freedom to become 
free in time. 

I have achieved freedom from many things. Where- 
as my work once enslaved me, the work I now do 
makes my happiness. And again in the matter of 
burden bearing for others; by the light of Mental 
Science I have discoverd that it is no relief to others 
to bear their burdens for them, and, therefore, I am 
relieved of this form of slavery. There is no crushing 
sense of duty on me from any source whatever. I 
have learned — this too from Mental Science — that 
obedience to the law of attraction supercedes the 
slavishness of duty, so that what I do is done in joy 
and gladness. 

I have learned that happiness is the true watch- 
word of progress, and that as I pursue happiness I 
find all desirable things flock to meet me. In this 
element of happiness love is generated, and love is the 
fruitful mother of every good. 

So potent is the effect of this fact that the success 
of our undertaking appears to rest upon it. We did 
not know when we came here that all the people were 



364 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

seeking happiness. At least, we did not know that 
they were seeking it right here and now; but they are. 
We thought they were denying themselves present 
happiness for the sake of laying up treasures in 
heaven; but we were mistaken. It is becoming 
natural for them to draw away from promises for the 
future in order to get more out of the present than 
they have ever jet had; and so the charm of a place 
that acknowledges the pursuit of happiness as its 
highest claim is making itself felt far and near; and 
all the people who come here speak of the health- 
giving element they find in the atmosphere, and tell 
how every moment seems fraught with power aud 
blessing. 

At present our town is called Sea Breeze; but after 
a while we shall give it another name. As citizens of 
the only spot on earth devoted to a search for happi- 
ness right here in this world and right now, it surely 
deserves a better name, and when the improvements 
we are making shall have ripened into beauty com- 
mensurate with the natural beauty of the place, we 
will accept the, name that even now by a sort of 
general consent is being bestowed upon it — that of 
"The City Beautiful. 1 ' The two words "happiness" 
and "beauty" are our beacon lights. Every effort we 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 365 

are making points straight in their direction. These 
efforts point over and beyond the clamor that, even as 
I write, is swelling up from the inharmonious con- 
dition of those who are denying this life in order to 
make preparation for a supposititious better one when 
this is ended. They are pointing over and beyond the 
cries of poverty and hard times now ascending day 
and night in one unbroken wail. They are pointing 
over and beyond the distress and pain of a thousand 
deeply grounded beliefs in the God-ordained omnipo- 
tence of disease and death; pointing over and beyond 
all so-called deplorable conditions to the great peace 
and joy that comes from knowing that all is good; 
that vital force — life — is self-existent, omnipotent, 
omniscient, omnipresent, and that it flows into man's 
statement of being, whether he makes that statement 
under the delusion of the world's present beliefs in 
disease, old age and death, or in the knowledge of his 
power to overcome all his supposed limitations and 
stand in the freedom of self-creativeness — a veritable 
god. 

This place is not a colony as many persons believe. 
It is simply an assemblage of individuals who are 
seeking to individualize themselves more powerfully 
still through a search for higher truths. We have no 



366 A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 

business interests which unite us, any more than the 
citizens of any other village have. Some of us only 
live here part of the year, having business elsewhere. 
Freedom has been the object of our search, and free- 
dom is only found in lines of thought and action that 
are themselves free. Some correspondents would put 
me under bond to remain here forever, but I will not 
submit to a bond. I am under the law of attraction; 
and while I am now so strongly attracted to this 
place as to feel that I shall never permanently leave 
it, yet I shall not pledge myself to remain in case the 
attraction ceased. 

And again; the school spoken of is only in embryo 
as yet. It is an ideal to be built in the future. Let 
who will come and help externalize this ideal. It is 
their business as much as mine. I am doing what I 
can in holding Mental Science classes here every 
winter; and though this is a good thing to do, yet it 
is not so good as it would be if others who are com- 
petent would take hold and add the other departments 
of study that would develop the undertaking into a 
great national institution for an absolutely un- 
trammelled education. 

For my part I feel that I can wait. I know that 
this thing is a growth, and not a building, and that 



A SEARCH FOR FREEDOM. 367 

growth is slow. I feel as if the years are all mine, 
and I need not hurry. Indeed, I know that I am 
simply in the beginning of the new time, which is 
carrying the race from under the rule of brute force 
into that of pure attraction; and I am patient as 
eternal hope can make me, and happy beyond the 
power of words to tell. 



OUR PUBLICATIONS. 

A Blossom of the Century. By Helen Wilmans. 

Cloth bound, $1. 

Oh World, Such as I Have Give I Unto Thee. 
By Helen Wilmans and Ada Wilmans Powers. Paper, 
2 vols., 50 cents each. 

The Beginning of Day — A Dream of Paradise. 
By Helen Wilmans. Paper, 25 cents. 

The Home Course in Mental Science. Twenty 7 
Lessons. By Helen Wilmans. $5 for the set. 

Poverty and Its Cure. By Helen Wilmans. 25 
cents. 

Metaphysical Essays. By C. C. Post. Paper, 30 
cents ; cloth, 50 cents. 

Our Places in the Universal Zodiac. By W. J. 
Colville. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1. 

A History of Theosophy. By W. J. Colville. 

Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1. 

Freedom. A sixteen-page weekly paper, devoted to 
the exposition of Mental Science ideas. Price $1 per 
year. 

For any of the above works send to our Publishing 
House. Address 

C. C. POST, 

Sea Breeze, Florida. 



°CT 17 1898 



AOG 2 3 1918 



